PORTLAND, Ore. — Many commuters dealt with delays in all directions on Monday, but few saw the scene on Interstate 5 that caused the day-long backups.
A Portland man, stuck in traffic that morning, happened to capture the deadly confrontation between police and the suspect of an alleged crime spree spanning across North and Northeast Portland.
"I kept an eye on the [police officers] and I was wondering what they were doing in the middle of traffic, getting out of their vehicle and parking their vehicle too in the left lane," said Mark, the viewer who got the video.
He told KGW while at a standstill, he rolled down his window to see what was going on.
"At that point, they were eyeing somebody over in a lane past my car. They were kind of setting up to possibly aim at somebody," he said. "They had their guns out ... and started saying stuff like, 'do you have a line on the guy, are you gonna shoot him?'"
That's when he rolled up his window and began to record.
"As they were telling him to stop, he kept creeping forward. He was definitely moving forward still and not stopping, only going to two or three miles an hour, and then all of a sudden they just started shooting into the driver side window.
"At the time I wasn't nervous about the whole thing because it was going so quickly and I wasn't realizing what was going on," Mark said.
Later that day, Mark said the gravity of what he witnessed hit him after learning more about the crime spree that led up to the police shooting. According to Portland police, that included a home invasion robbery and multiple armed carjackings, which ended with the suspect shooting and injuring a driver on the interstate in an attempt to steal the vehicle.
RELATED: Police: Armed carjacking suspect committed string of crimes leading up to Monday morning shooting
"Once I started realizing the story and that this guy had been on the run... it really started to hit me...I feel pretty lucky. I came home and I hugged my family, glad that I wasn’t a victim of any sort in this incident - just a bystander."
There's a lot we still don't know in this case, including the name of the suspect. Detectives ask that people who witnessed any part of the crime spree come forward to help them piece together a detailed timeline.