PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — He was like a father figure in his Northeast Portland neighborhood. For years he had a welding shop in the 4200 block of NE Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, an area he loved.
His grandson told KOIN 6 News 85-year-old Gene Gora was known for sitting outside his apartment — in the welding shop-turned-residence — or at the nearby Miracles Club, a clean and sober recovery facility next to the Heavenly Taste Cafe where he would listen to people and offer words of wisdom.
Around 6:30 p.m. Thursday, he was found by a caretaker on the floor in his residence in a scene police described as suspicious. The Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office determined Gora died by homicidal violence.
The manner in which he was killed was not released.
“It don’t make sense to me at all,” grandson Sam Scalf said. “He’s an elderly man. He’s defenseless, like his memory ain’t there.”
Scalf is devastated and searching for answers. Investigators stayed at the scene for most of Friday.
He said his grandfather “like to help the less fortunate. He would bring them in, feed them, give them the opportunity to learn the art of welding and then he would give them a job or help them find jobs.”
His granddad often used a walker and would talk to passersby, “just start up conversations. He was known throughout the community here for as long as I can remember.”
Aaron Parker, who considered himself a friend of Gora’s, would come and open up a nearby building. “He’s usually setting in his doorway and he’ll stop and say ‘Good morning’ and we have a talk. All I can say is he was a really good person. He’s going to be well missed.”
Pastor Dwight Minnieweather, who owns the Heavenly Taste Cafe, said he has known Gene Gora “since I was 7 years old.”
“Gene used to take the big barrels, cut them in half, weld them together. So all the guys who wanted to really barbecue big, they’d go to Gene. I remember being 8 or 9 years old, picking up barbecue pits and stuff.”
Minnieweather said the community loved him.
“If you interview anyone, they’re going to say the same exact thing. Never been disrespectful, never see any forms of racism.”
Michael is a volunteer down the street at “A Heavenly Taste Cafe,” he says the man found dead was well-known and well-liked in the neighborhood #KOIN6News pic.twitter.com/QufeagiDql— Cole Miller (@ColeKOIN) May 11, 2018
Michael Martin, who works at the Heavenly Taste Cafe, told KOIN 6 News Thursday night Gora “was sitting out here not a half-hour, 45 minutes before all this transpired. He was sitting out her talking to some of the same people that patronize here, that work here and visit the club. Then all of a sudden, the next thing we know, this happens.”
Martin described him as a “very nice guy” who’s been in the neighborhood for years. “He comes here, he eats ice cream and cobbler and sometimes eats breakfast.”
Gene Gora knew everybody that works at the restaurant.
“He doesn’t bother anyone. He’s friendly with everybody. Everybody knows him, everybody talks with him,” Martin said. “He just comes here and sits here daily. We see him everyday.”
He didn’t have any enemies, Martin said. “He’s very respectable.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “he’s coming in the morning when we’re having church service. He’d sit out in the hall and I know he’d be listening to the word of God.”
PPB Sgt. Chris Burley said he doesn’t believe there is a danger to the public.
“But we are asking anyone in the area that may know anything about this incident to contact the detectives that are leading the investigation.”
Police are also looking for neighbors to come forward with any surveillance video they may have, “not just in the 4200 block of NE MLK but in the are in the surrounding blocks.”
Pastor Minnieweather added Gene’s death has rocked the neighborhood.
“It’s not really a good feeling around here. The whole place is kind of shook up. … Right now I’m getting a little emotional just thinking about that somebody could do something like that to him.”