PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The gun violence in a 24-hour span across Portland may be part of a larger trend. Portland police released new gun violence statistics that are shocking.
And no arrests have been made in any of these incidents.
Around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, a woman said she was pulled out of her car and robbed at gunpoint in Portland’s Montavilla neighborhood. A white man came up to her car, fired a gun into the ground, forced her out of her car, took her purse and drove away, she told police.
About 3 hours later on North Williams Avenue, officers said they found about 58 bullet casings spread out over several blocks — including casings from an AK-47 and a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. Multiple cars were hit and at least one home was damaged by gunfire. No one was hurt.
Hannah Patterson, whose car was shot 3 times, said she began hearing gunfire around 9 p.m.
“It got hit in 3 different points of entry,” she told KOIN 6 News. “There’s one on the back window, and then one on the front windshield and then one on the front driver’s side tire, as well.”
“I think that the weirdest part is that we were inside and we weren’t even sure that it was guns ’cause it was just so many” bullets, she said.
Around 10 p.m. someone showed up at a local hospital with a gunshot wound but refused to provide any details about how it happened to police.
Then early Thursday morning, one person was shot to death at NE 111th and Sandy. Very few details have been released on this shooting.
The gun statistics released by PPB showed there was a nearly 250% increase in shootings in September 2020 than in September 2019.
There were more than 100 shootings reported in each of July, August and September this year — and so far this year there has been nearly 600 shootings.
That’s 82% higher than the total of 327 in all of 2019.
Those injured by gunfire has also spike dramatically, up 78% in 2020. A total of 173 people have been hurt in shootings in Portland this year.
Hannah Patterson said she feels “like everything’s on the rise right now just across the state, and the country with everything else that we’ve gone through this year. So it’s not necessarily shocking but it is sad and upsetting.”
