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Three people died along some of the city’s main thoroughfares in the past 36 hours, in a surge of violence noteworthy even in an unusually deadly year.
Early Sunday morning, an intoxicated driver struck and killed a man living in a tent along Interstate 205. Today, police identified the victim as 27-year-old Terrence Tombe.
The driver was April Leigh Johnson, 20. She’s being charged with criminally negligent homicide, driving under the influence and reckless driving. Johnson struck Tombe’s tent where it was set up near the Southeast Powell Boulevard offramp along the interstate.
Related: Traffic safety watchdogs say people sleeping next to highways are being killed by cars.
Three hours later on that same morning, a car crashed into a pole at 5:50 am at the intersection of Northeast Portland Highway and 45th Avenue in the Cully neighborhood. The Portland Police Bureau said the driver, a man, was found dead.
UPDATE, 8:15 pm: Police said Monday night the man found dead in Cully was fatally shot before he crashed into the pole. It was ruled a homicide.
And then, at 10 am Monday morning, a police officer shot and killed an armed person who the bureau says was “involved in multiple carjackings” along Interstate 5 near the Rosa Parks Way exit. (A carjacking is when someone attempts to steal an occupied car.)
“During the commission of the one of the carjackings, the suspect fired a shot which injured a victim,” the bureau said in a statement. “A some point, deadly force was deployed by police.”
The deaths add to a historic toll of violence in the city. In 2021, at least 79 people have been killed in homicides—the single-year record—and as many as 63 people died in traffic crashes, a 25-year high. Portland police officers have now killed four people this year.