PORTLAND, Oregon — A downtown Portland landlord has pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges stemming from an incident in which he pulled a gun on a tenant last year. Leon Drennan, 75, entered a guilty plea at a hearing before Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Eric J. Bergstrom on Thursday.
Drennan appeared in a video recorded on August 13, 2020 by Torrance Hunter, a resident of the Steward Hotel on Southwest Broadway in downtown Portland, in which Drennan could be seen pointing a handgun at Hunter and used racial slurs. Drennan was the hotel owner at the time, property records show the building was sold earlier this year. The building also housed Mary's Club, a well-known strip club in Portland that's now closed, and Drennan was also the landlord of.
The victim called police, and Drennan was arrested. Prosecutors charged him in September 2020 with 15 counts including multiple counts of second-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon, menacing and bias crimes. The first nine counts pertained to the incident with Hunter. The other six pertained to an incident involving two other residents, Latif Bossman and Kambria Kony.
Bossman told KGW last year that there had been another incident on July 1 in which Drennan pulled out a gun while talking to a fellow resident. Bossman said he verbally intervened, at which point Drennan pointed the gun at him and called him the n-word. Court documents state that Kony was the other resident involved in that incident. Drennan is white; Hunter, Bossman and Kony are all Black.
Bossman and Hunter each separately sued Drennan over the incidents. Bossman and his attorney Michael Fuller staged a protest outside of the district attorney’s office last August to call attention to the fact that Drennan had, at the time, not been charged for either incident.
Hunter’s lawsuit alleged that in addition to pointing the handgun at him, Drennan struck him in the head with a crowbar, pistol whipped him and called him the n-word during the Aug. 13 incident. Bossman’s lawsuit sought up to $4.5 million in damages, and Hunter’s sought up to $6 million.
Drennan accepted a plea deal in the criminal case in which he pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree assault, a Class B felony, plus one count of unlawful use of a weapon and one count of first-degree bias crime with a firearm, both of which are Class C felonies. All three charges pertain to the incident with Hunter.
In exchange, the District Attorney’s office dropped the other charges, and prosecutors recommended a reduced sentence of 36 months of probation for each guilty count (served concurrently), no contact with any of the three victims and “all court ordered financial obligations at the court’s discretion.”
The guilty plea for the assault charge also carries a sentence of no weapons, firearms or ammunition, a drug and alcohol evaluation and any recommended treatment and emotions management class per Drennan’s parole officer.
“We are satisfied this is a fair and equitable outcome,” Fuller said at the hearing on Thursday, speaking on behalf of Bossman.
Bergstrom stated at the end of the hearing that he would waive any financial obligations relating to the criminal case because restitution had been made through the civil process. Court records list a notice of dismissal for the Bossman lawsuit filed earlier this week.
Fuller later told KGW that Bossman’s lawsuit had been settled and that Bossman had accepted $185,000 in compensation. The Hunter lawsuit was also settled and Hunter also received compensation, Fuller said, although he did not know the exact amount. Hunter’s attorney could not be reached for comment Thursday.