But it would turn out to be only the first of four such shootings by police in a bloody five-month period in 1974 and ’75, each of which killed a young Black man or teenager.įew Portlanders today have ever heard of the three men and a teenager killed nearly 50 years ago, but they live in a city that was shaped by the deaths. The death of a young man in crisis was the kind of avoidable tragedy that alone could scar a community. 8, 1974, after a brief scuffle with police. Joe Hopkins was shot and killed near the Southwest 5th Avenue and Morrison intersection Oct. By the time Store returned downtown, her client was dead. After a brief struggle, they shot him in the back.
Hopkins, formerly an accomplished boxer, soon left the downtown office, and cops caught up with him on Southwest Fifth Avenue.
Hopkins even brought the homework she gave him - a list of his goals for the future and the things that mattered to him.īut that public-defender’s office employee, Solveig Store, had been alerted to the situation at Hopkins’ home and had gone to the house, unaware that he had already left. He’d then slipped out of his own house unseen and headed across the river for an appointment at the defender’s office with a young social worker, possibly the only person in the world he trusted. He’d just shot at a neighbor’s house in Southeast Portland half a dozen times, and he’d threatened to kill a cop who tried to talk to him.
0 kommentar(er)
