PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — “60 Minutes” will focus national attention on a case involving the death of a Portland teenager and calls for international justice.
Fallon Smart was 15 when she was killed by a speeding driver in Southeast Portland. The driver was a 20-year-old Saudi citizen in college in Oregon. He was arrested but somehow fled the country and went back to Saudi Arabia — despite his passport being confiscated.
Some American politicians say it’s not worth upsetting an ally in the fight against terrorism over a case like this. Sen. Ron Wyden thinks otherwise.
“I just don’t buy the idea that fighting terrorism and securing justice are mutually exclusive,” Wyden tells Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes. “Our government ought to be doing both.”
The full “60 Minutes” story will air at 7 p.m. Sunday on KOIN 6.
What happened
On August 20, 2016, Fallon Smart was about to enter her sophomore year at Franklin High School when she was hit and killed by Abdulahraman Sameer Noorah while crossing SE Hawthorne at 42nd.
Investigators said Noorah — who was 20 at the time — was speeding between 55 and 60 mph and was allegedly passing vehicles in the center lane along Hawthorne between 46th and 43rd at the time of the crash.
Abdulahraman Noorah is a Saudi citizen who was in the United States on a school scholarship. After he hit and killed Fallon Smart, he returned to the scene and was arrested. In his first court appearance days later, he was ordered held on $1 million bail on a manslaughter charge. His public defender argued he should be released because he was not a flight risk.
Noorah bailed out of jail in September 2016 and was placed on house arrest. Not long after, he removed the GPS monitoring device he had been wearing since being released on bail.
KOIN 6 News learned the consulate of Saudi Arabia posted Noorah’s $100,000 bail on September 9, 2016, and he had been under Close Street Supervision ever since.
In December 2018, newly released photos from 2017 showed a black SUV that helped Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah escape house arrest and flee to Saudi Arabia after he allegedly hit and killed Fallon Smart.
He cut off his ankle monitoring bracelet and vanished in June 2017.
In December 2018, United States Marshals confirmed Noorah is in Saudi Arabia but it’s not clear how he got there.
He added US officials with Homeland Security requested additional information about Noorah’s inbound flight arrival in Saudi Arabia, “and those requests have gone unanswered. We will continue to work with HSI and our Office of International Affairs in attempts to get Noorah back to the US for trial.”