(Photo by Henry Scholz)
The Portland Police Bureau arrested two teenagers for allegedly throwing bricks at three people who were bicycling in inner northeast Portland last night.
One of the victims, 26-year-old Adrian Richardson, was hit in the face and was taken to the hospital. Richardson is a serious local bike racer who works at Showers Pass.
Here’s the official statement from the PPB:
On Sunday April 20, 2014, at 1:21 a.m., North Precinct officers responded to the area of Northeast 7th Avenue and Tillamook Street on the report that two males threw a brick at a bicyclist, striking him in the face.
The victim provided descriptions of the suspects for police and waited for medical personnel to respond to the scene.
Several officers arrived in the area and contacted the victim. Officers also located the suspects at Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Knott Street and took them into custody. Two additional victims were located by police.
Officers learned that the suspects threw broken pieces of brick at passing bicyclists, striking two of them. One victim, 26-year-old Adrian Richardson of Northeast Portland, was struck in the face, suffering injuries that required transportation to the hospital. Another victim, 52-year-old Jonathan Garris of Northeast Portland, was struck in one of his legs. A third victim, 27-year-old Peter Buri of North Portland, had a brick thrown at him by the suspects but was not hit.
The suspects, 15-year-old Marquise Murphy and 15-year-old Robert Hudgens, were charged with Assault in the Second Degree and Assault in the Third Degree. Both were lodged at the Donald E. Long Juvenile Detention Home (JDH). Their names are being released because the Assault in the Second Degree charge is a Measure 11.
Anyone with information about this assault is asked to contact Detective Jeff Sharp at (503) 823-9773 or jeff.sharp@portlandoregon.gov.
According to sources who know Richardson, the teens apparently threw the bricks because they were “bored.” One of Richardson’s friends, David Boerner, told us he’s “stitched up but OK.”
We’ll update this story as we learn more.
Thanks for reading.
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Too bad they didn’t know that riding bikes is the best cure for boredom. I feel sorry for them. Seriously.
And I hope the riders heal up fast, and don’t stop riding.
Terribly sad story. I hope the victims recover quickly and without much pain.
Please bear in mind that any alleged motive is based on 3rd or 4th hand information. I hope that the alleged perpetrators receive effective defense services, fair trials and, if convicted, appropriate sentences that improve their lives and those around them. With mandatory sentencing (and what we know about DOC) my hopes about those are pretty dim.
really? Throwing a brick at someone is attempted murder in my eyes. Let ’em rot.
“Let ’em rot.”? Your complete lack of humanity toward a couple of kids is disgusting, and you make the world a worse place to live.
“A couple of kids” who could have killed any one of their victims.
I think, if convicted, 70months (for each count–to run concurrently, probably) of rotting in prison is not entirely too much.
If i remember right, they never caught those kids who threw a traffic cone at someone on a bike over on Vancouver and Shaver around six or nine months ago, who ended up getting a bunch of his teeth knocked out. That’s about three or four blocks from this intersection.
Going off the assumption that throwing heavy objects at people’s faces while they bike isn’t happening too much, I wonder if there’s a connection.
It breaks my heart to read a story like this.
They were bored at 1:21 am on a Sunday? How about going to bed since they presumably have school the next day.
school was still over 30 hours away, on Monday morning…
At 15 years old and that close to Irving Park, I’d lay down odds that consumption of something intoxicating was involved in some way. I could be wrong though.
Most commenters are lots more generous than I would be for these alleged miscreants. Several years ago, a young woman in Eugene lost an eye when hit in the face by stuff thrown from a car. It changed her life forever.
I have no confidence that these youths will be rehabilitated or will ever become productive members of society.
No confidence that they will ever be rehabilitated or productive members of society? So, what then, life in prison? Death? C’mon… They are stupid kids who deserve punishment, but you have no evidence that they won’t grow up to be decent adults.
It’s good to have hope, but it can be very difficult to have confidence that people doing this kind of thing, will grow up to be decent adults.
Would be interesting to know what is the worst these individuals have experienced in their lives, and how it compares to the severity of what happens to a person’s body and mind when a brick is dropped on them. That and plenty of other things will likely figure into what the chances are that eventually they’ll be something better than morally deficient losers.
Here’s to hoping that you are never in a position of authority where you get to make decisions affecting youthful offenders. You might want to read up on the differences between the brain functioning of a teenager and an adult before voicing a baseless opinion that a single bad act is predictive of how a 15-year-old will behave for the rest of his or her life.
Best wishes for a speedy and complete recovery for the victims of these crimes.
They certainly won’t if our current “justice” system has anything to say about it. lol, rehabilitation. Not in Murrica!
hood rats are a menace. i dont ride with lights in NE on purpose. better to be stealthy and quiet when rolling thru central mlk hoods….
A number of years ago, I spotted two youths a block or two ahead of me breaking a pile of red bricks in half by striking them on the edge of the curb. Given that advanced warning, I was able to avoid being struck when they threw the brick halves at me as I cycled by. When I called the police (I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan) to report this event,they treated me like I was calling to report someone littering. Just one of many, many, incidents I’ve managed to survive over the four decades of bicycle commuting. Fun.
Those kids are my daughter’s age. Not very good thinking skills at that age. Too bad the partents don’t know or don’t care that their kids are out & about at such a troublesome hour.
Why is this not being considered a hate crime?
Is there something that you know that would suggest that this would qualify for such a crime? Be careful throwing around such accusations unless you have some proof to back it up. There is enough hate in this world that we don’t need to add to it.
These might well be race related crimes, judging by the names of at least one of the kids and the picture and names of the victims. I know people ‘don’t want to go there’ in these discussions, but it might well be a pertinent element of the discussion. I allow that I could be totally wrong, but you just asked about suspicions, not facts.
I have no problem “going there” if that is where the facts lead, but I have heard no credible source quoting the alleged aggressors’ that would suggest it. And I asked about what people know, not what they suspect. Let’s leave race out of this until we actually have proof that it is part the equation.
Because there is zero evidence to support that it was a hate crime. Absolutely nothing about this suggests that it was an acting out of hatred for a definable group.
Usually people online exhibit ‘keyboard-courage’ on comment threads. Look at you though. Blazing the trail for ‘keyboard-fear’.
because a hate crime is defined as being motivated by enmity or animus against a protected class.
If there’s one thing that we know it’s that, even in Portland, cyclists are not a protected class.
From the Oregon Department of Justice web site:
“A hate crime occurs when one person intentionally subjects another to offensive physical contact, threatens or inflicts physical injury, or threatens or causes damage to the property of another person because of their race, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or national origin.”
What evidence is there that the riders were targeted because for any of the reasons cited above?
…and full face helmet here I come
Boys throw stones at frogs in fun, but the frogs do not die in fun, but in earnest. – Bion of Borysthenes
also this one from Kage Baker (probably not original to her) “Qui parcit nocentibus inno- centes punit”; which would be translated as, “Who spares the guilty punishes the innocent.
Frogs don’t shoot back, either. Concealed Carry….
You can draw a gun from a bike after getting a brick to the face? You are all that is man.
A) How about the other people being violently assaulted at the time? B) I doubt he was still on his bike after being bricked. C) It is entirely possible to draw, shoot and hit your target from the ground. D) Self-defense/preservation is gender neutral.
Self defense doesn’t require a gun.
Nope, guns sure can help when your life is in danger though. Bullets > bricks.
Shoot-outs on public streets with children. We can do better.
The age of someone throwing a brick at your head is of absolutely zero importance while the act is happening. We only know the ages of the accused in hindsight.
I hope your karma is good Captain because “children” like those aren’t likely to stop and hug it out once they’ve decided to do smash your head in. Don’t take that to mean I’m against hugs,I’m totally not, I’m just a realist.
At 15 years of age they had no business being on the street at that hour, are old enough to know better and are deserving of serious punishment. My sympathies are with the victims not the perpetrators. I will not hold my breath on them becoming productive members of society, but there is hope if they learn that their actions have consequences. In a city where I have seen bumper stickers saying “death to bike theifs” I fail to see why the sympathies towards someone physically attacking bike riders. We’ll done to the responding PPB Officers for apprehending the suspects. I hope the courts follow through appropriately.
I wouldn’t bike in that area at 1:30am, for that exact reason
…could it be a hate crime?
No No No.
Even if we had evidence that the young suspects really really really HATED cyclists that wouldn’t make it a hate crime.
it’s not just two words that sound good together, it’s a legally defined specific thing.
grrrr.
Throwing around buzzwords in situations they do not apply to is the realm of TV news.
Take it easy. You can read the definitions for these terms online.
There is NO WAY AT ALL that this can even be remotely considered a hate crime.
Wow! The suspects were caught without them even having license plates!
hate crime? no, dislike crime, yes! bikes represent white people and therefore white gentrification to many black people. tah dah!
Really, how do you know what “many” black people think about bikes, white people or gentrification?
See number 11:
http://thoughtcatalog.com/macy-sto-domingo/2014/04/18-things-white-people-seem-to-not-understand-because-white-privilege/#OXzbsKeHFseE9SGt.01
i guess the black kids chucking rocks at the white cyclists didnt read this article either….1. White Privilege is being able to move into a new neighborhood and being fairly sure that your neighbors will be pleasant to you and treat you with respect.
Please provide the evidence that the suspects were black. There have been no mentions of race or photos of the two teenagers in any of the stories I have seen. Please also provide evidence that the other two cyclists thrown at in addition to Adrian Richardson were white. Again I have seen nothing published that would identify their race.
Unless you know something I don’t know, all you are doing is projecting your racism.
And how. God, vomit.
I’m not entirely sure you can really infer that the cyclists were white based on last names and a relatively low quality photo of one of them in high-contrast lighting.
I raced with Adrian in the PSU Cycling team. I wish him a great and speedy recovery!
Only 11 persons <18 y/o in prison on Measure 11 crimes. Perhaps there will be 2 more. http://www.oregon.gov/doc/RESRCH/docs/m11juv.pdf
Very unfortunate situation. My hope would be for some sort of restorative justice approach–assuming, of course, that the victims were open to it–wherein the teenagers and the victims could meet and the teens could see and hear about the real effects of their actions on these people; talk about whatever their motivations might have been; and perhaps have an opportunity to make amends in some way (such as helping to pay medical costs and/or doing community service for a bike-safety project). I think this sort of approach would be much more effective for public/bike safety than a “lock ’em up/tough-on-crime” approach. Not holding my breath, but I would love to see it.
i dunno. id take your relative safety living and riding around NE portland as relative. statistics are in your favor that you wont be a victim of violence but if you are a cyclist who is attacked, you assailiant is probably black. dont worry though, there are white hoodlums out in the suburbs that love to target you with paintball guns or airsoft. so take your pick, cars and suburban hijnx or urban and gangstery. riding a bike in the city aint easy. just stay out of any neighborhood within 10 blocks east of mlk and you should be fine. carry on.
I’ll take those odds over many other parts of town with aggressive drivers. I find this act horrific, yet isolated. I live in and ride these streets daily without any more fear than any other part of town and actually find them to be quite conflict free.
I’ll agree with that. I feel like drivers in NE Portland are more patient than in other parts of town. I’ve luckily never experienced any aggression from people on the streets there either. Hopefully my experience is the norm.
Drivers in NE Portland seem rather human to me. Human, and therefore fallible. If they are ‘better’ it’s just because there are more bikes. Based on personal experience, the most dangerous m.v. operators in NE have one or more car seats on board.
This, absolutely. I live in that neighborhood and I have NEVER felt endangered at night on my bike, and I am a small-statured white female. I’m extremely perturbed by all the people saying that they would never ride in that area at night. I know that Portland has a very ugly track record when it comes to race issues and that inner NE is particularly contentious and that sometimes violent acts of protest occur I have never felt endangered by any people of color around me, and I am very disturbed by the fact that so many people’s gut reaction seems to be people of color = violence. “Horrific but isolated” is an apt descriptor, it seems to me, after having living and biking right there for a year myself.
here, peruse this for awhile. 7th and tillmaook is a shady neighborhood on many accounts. i work at lloyd center which is even worse! i dont fear for my life walking aorund inner NE during the day but all sorts of shady #$%^ happens around here. there were 50 simple assauts and 23 aggravated assualuts within a 1/2 mile radius of that intersection. and those were the only one reported. im not one for fear mongering but dont believe NE portland along the MLK cooridor is extraordinarily safe. its not….http://www.portlandmaps.com/detail.cfm?action=Crime_Summary&propertyid=R189346&state_id=1N1E26CB%20%2010500&address_id=36015&intersection_id=&dynamic_point=0&x=7649269.986&y=690199.079&place=2335%20NE%208TH%20AVE&city=PORTLAND&neighborhood=IRVINGTON&seg_id=110854
I mean, I expect some amount of crime in inner areas of cities. then again, I’m from Boston and had my street smarts figured out by my early teens. to pretend that Portland is some idyllic peaceful wonderland is naive; but to act like this area is an epicenter of crime, to the point where a person won’t even bike through the area because of “angry black people,” is alarmist [and racist?] Keep alert, be aware of your surroundings, know when to get the heck outta dodge. Walking along MLK and Multnomah alone at night isn’t fun, nope. On a bike though, at speed and aware of your surroundings? I feel safer than I do biking home in downtown traffic, that’s for sure. Now, biking through Chinatown at night is another story – I’ll do it but I never feel comfortable about it [and once had a vagrant on a bike ride up to me and actually try to tip my bike over]. tl;dr to say to say that one should never bike near 7th/tillamook at night is just mind-boggling to me.
^^^im not calling it the epicenter of crime, its not, junk like this latest incident happens every year. and its usually the same story, white cyclist attacked by black kids in inner NE. im not race baiting, its just a shitty byproduct of neighborhood which is going through a rapid transistion. its not a new story, in fact every single city in america is seeing inner city growth. white flight to the burbs is basically reversing itself and now those old conflicts white people ran from in the 1960’s are surfacing again. this time we are seen as the nieghborhood invader. anyway, its a tricky situation to negotiate. it will be sometime before things come out in the wash so to speak.
And statistics are in your favor that if you are white, you are just much less likely overall to be a victim of violence, period, from people of any color. This crime is an outlier, not the rule.
you must be new around here…http://bikeportland.org/2007/01/19/attack-on-cyclists-not-an-aberration-2858
Your refutation of decades of research proving that whites are far less likely to be victims of crime is a seven year old Bike Portland article in which a handful of people offer anecdotes? I don’t understand your insistence in making this about race when there is zero evidence that it was.
Ooo weee. Big can of worms hath been opened. 1, I never stated white people are more prone to being victims of violence at the hands of black people, at least not in the grand scheme of things. Quite the opposite, in the U.S. violence is usually almost always perpetuated and inflicted upon people of the same race. This we can agree upon. 2, Ill spare you the NE Portland Gentrification history lesson, you can do you own research, but if you are a cyclist and you were attacked in inner NE, it was probably racially motivated, the victim was probably white, and the assailiant I would put money was not. In this latest incident, the kids name was Marquise Murphy. That not what I would call a Dick and Jane, w.a.s.p.y name. But I digress, ride where you like, but if you ride in NE portland, use caution…..
I’ve lived in inner NE for 15 years, I think I have an understanding of what has transpired in regards to gentrification. Where do you live?
You keep making these broad pronouncements without any evidence to support them e.g. “if you are a cyclist and you were attacked in inner NE, it was probably racially motivated, the victim was probably white, and the assailiant I would put money was not. In this latest incident, the kids name was Marquise Murphy. That not what I would call a Dick and Jane, w.a.s.p.y name.” That’s what I keep taking exception too. That’s why I keep asking for you to provide some real evidence instead of assumptions rooted in racism. As long as you keep doing so, I will continue point out the truth.
great, so if you’ve lived in NE for 15 years and understand what has transpired, then you should not be suprised black portlanders might be pissed at the changes that have happened to their neighborhood in the last 2 decades. but you are right, i have no evidence these kids are downright racists or even black.. i dont have a picture of them, but come on, how many white kids are named marquise? probability zero, unless you live in france.. we can probably chalk up their motivation to dumb ass kids acting like idiots. but in the larger picture, the social dynamic of NE is not as placid as everybody wants to believe it is. but hey, its looks like we are both urban experts. i live by montgomery park and ive been living in inner portland neighborhoods since the early 90s. im from beaverton.
Bored? I am sure there is lots of hard labor that they can be not bored at doing.
Whoa, BP is sounding like O’Live. Maybe it’s time to end anonymity?
Say hello to Mr. and Mrs. Karma for me–
In Eugene someone is driving around throwing darts at people, including cyclists.