PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — A Portland police officer he “was preparing myself to get shot” the night he and his partner fired 12 rounds and killed Patrick Kimmons in a downtown parking lot.
Kimmons, 27, was shot in the early morning hours of September 30 almost immediately after he was involved in another shooting.
On October 31, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said the grand jury found Sgt. Garry Britt and Officer Jeffrey Livingston were acting in self-defense or defense of a third person.
Now, those grand jury transcripts were released by the DA’s office.
In the transcript, Britt said Kimmons started shooting into a group of people that was fighting right as he and Livingston arrived at the scene at SW 3rd and Harvey Milk.
Kimmons began shooting so quickly that Britt said he couldn’t even get on the radio to alert other officers to the fight.
Livingston said he could see Kimmons “open fire at point-blank range of the individuals in that group. And the reason I remember that so well is, one, it was loud and, two, he was holding it quite high, shoulder height and maybe even higher as he was firing the gun at the group.”
Britt said he started following Kimmons on foot, and Kimmons started to move toward him. He said he told Kimmons to put his hands up, but he didn’t.
“At that point,” Britt told the grand jury, “I thought I was going to get shot, too, and so I began to fire my firearm while kind of twisting my body away from him to the right. It was just instinct because I was preparing myself to get shot.”
Britt fired 7 times, Livingston 5.
Livingston, who’s been with the Portland Police Bureau for about a year-and-a-half, told the grand jury it was a level of fear and adrenaline he had never felt before in his life — and that he hopes he never has to do something like that again in the 23 years left in his career.
Police released surveillance video from the shooting
Warning: Graphic content