PORTLAND, Ore. — The Portland Police Bureau made an arrest Sunday in the beating of the Black owner of a Southeast Portland food truck in June.
Police arrested 40-year-old Daniel Thomas Warren after identifying him as a suspect on June 29. Warren was charged with assault in the second-degree, according to the Portland Police Bureau.
Around 7:35 a.m. two officers were responding to a call while assisting Portland Fire and Rescue with traffic control on Southeast Division Street near 122nd. The officers spotted Warren walking by and immediately stopped and arrested him.
PPB stated that the arrest is "not the end of the work" and Major Crimes Unit detectives are still investigating the case.
On June 15, Darell Preston, the owner of LoRell's Chicken Shack on Foster Road near 52nd Avenue was attacked, with an attorney for the victim saying that a white man yelled racial slurs during the unprovoked beating.
PPB later confirmed that the case is being investigated as a bias crime. A statement released by the agency on June 27 identified Warren as the suspect. The agency released a mugshot of him from October 2021, plus a screenshot from video taken shortly after the attack.
Last week, attorney Alicia LeDuc Montgomery released a statement announcing that she is representing Preston.
According to the attorney, Preston was standing behind his food truck, talking to his wife on the phone, when someone "violently assaulted him from behind" without warning. The statement describes the assailant as a white man.
The attacker hit Preston in the head and continued beating him, the law office said, knocking him to the ground and yelling racial slurs. The attack and racial slurs continued as Preston tried to get up.
“I hit you n***, stay on the ground!” LeDuc Montgomery quoted the attacker as saying.
Cell phone video purportedly documenting the end of the attack, provided by the attorney, shows Warren walking nonchalantly away after pulling Preston back to the ground and stomping on him.
According to the attorney, Portland police responded to the scene but did not, to the family's knowledge, "call an ambulance or provide medical care to Mr. Preston." He was taken to the hospital by his wife, his injured face wrapped in a shirt.
"The Preston family still does not know whether an arrest has been made or if charges are being pursued by the District Attorney’s Office," the statement adds. "The family believes the suspect has been identified, but neither the Portland Police Bureau nor Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office have responded to requests for information by the family’s attorney, Alicia LeDuc Montgomery."
The statement, as well as a notice to the Multnomah County District Attorney's office and the Portland Police Bureau of Preston's legal representation, were released Monday.
In the notice to the DA's office and PPB, LeDuc Montgomery reiterated that she had not received a response about the status of the investigation or whether it was being viewed as a bias crime. She said that her office was investigating the incident, as well as the "timeliness and sufficiency of the government’s response to this matter."
On June 28, the Portland Police Bureau provided a statement about the investigation. It confirmed that the agency's Major Crimes Team is investigating the attack as a potential bias crime, but said that no arrests had been made.
"A lot of work has to be done to make sure that the facts are gathered and verified first," Sgt. Kevin Allen said. "Any arrest must be based on probable cause and will stand up to scrutiny in any future criminal court proceeding. A misstep now could prevent justice from being served later, and we have dedicated and professional detectives working hard to do things right."
PPB said it would not discuss any video or photos of the crime or its aftermath being distributed.
The agency also pushed back on LeDuc Montgomery's insinuation that police did not take the attack seriously.
"The officer, upon noticing the injuries to the victim, immediately offered to summon EMS," Allen added. "The victim declined. Because he appeared to be conscious, oriented, and able to make his own health care decisions, it would not have been appropriate for the officer to override the patient’s wishes."
Preston went back to work for the first time since the incident on Sunday, his attorney confirmed to KGW. He declined to speak on camera or personally comment on the incident.
Timeline of Portland police information
On June 17, a family member of Preston's posted a fundraiser on GoFundMe on the food truck owner's behalf, describing the incident as a "racially motivated attack and potential hate crime."
In an initial statement released to the media on June 19, Portland police said that officers were originally dispatched just after 7 p.m. on June 15 to a report of a pedestrian struck by a car. Firefighters, who were first to arrive on the scene, told officers that it was actually an assault and that "both sides had already left" before first responders arrived, PPB said.
A witness then told police that the victim was near the food carts, so officers went looking. They found Preston, who police did not identify at the time of this statement, and spent "several minutes" convincing him to come out of his food cart to talk to them.
"Once the victim was out he told officers he was delivering food and was 'attacked,'" Lt. Nathan Sheppard said in the statement. "When the officer asked for more detail on exactly what happened, the victim refused to say more and locked himself in the cart."
According to PPB, the primary responding officer made efforts to collect evidence, including video, and wrote up a police report. One witness gave them a general description of the suspect, but officers did not locate him during a search of the area.
"The victim would not agree to be a 'victim' and provided no description of the assault to officers," Sheppard said. "The primary officer provided his business card to the victim and asked him to call if he changed his mind and wanted to give details of the assault."
"This isn’t being investigated as a hate crime since no elements of a hate crime was detailed to officers, and there was no mention of a 'skinhead,'" he added.
On June 24, Sgt. Allen confirmed that the case was being investigated by the Major Crimes Unit, "which investigates bias crimes," though he did not confirm at the time that the case was being investigated as such.
PPB confirmed in its Wednesday statement that this was a bias crime investigation. A follow-up statement on Thursday identified Warren as the suspect, adding that detectives had contacted the victim's family on June 18, the day before PPB's initial statement.
Warren has an extensive criminal history in Oregon, and he's been charged a number of times with assault, coercion, harassment and strangulation, among a number of other crimes.
After being convicted of fourth-degree domestic violence assault in February of this year, a judge sentenced Warren to 180 days in jail with credit for time served. It's unclear when Warren was released, but a letter he wrote to the judge was entered into the court record on June 1.
"When you told me that I would end up here for murder, it made me really look at myself and why I'm here, and I don't want to be here for the rest of my life," Warren wrote in part. "I've been changing everything, my core beliefs and thinking patterns."
Officials are asking the public for any information pertaining to the day of the attack. Tips can be emailed to crimetips@police.portlandoregon.gov to the attention of the Major Crimes Unit, reference case #23-157872.
The GoFundMe posted to support Preston had raised nearly $83,000 from an original goal of $10,000 as of Sunday afternoon.