If you would like more information about what’s happening in Oregon, please FReepmail me. Please send me your name by FReepmail if you want to be on this list. Rachael basically became part of Shay’s family, a surrogate granddaughter to Shay’s own grandmother Margaret Carter, Oregon’s first black female legislator. Rachael did not have parents of her own. Her mother had signed away her rights to her children when Rachael was 10. She and her younger siblings had been fostered by this couple, Roger and Donna Manwarren. Shay thought the Manwarrens had a white savior complex, until they didn't — until they drove to California while Rachael was still in high school and left no forwarding address. Rachael was staying with various friends until she moved in with Shay.
Rachael had grown up Catholic but never vibed with it and converted to Islam before she and Mario split.
Her next two partners were Muslim Somalis. Shay had not known the first husband, the father of Rachael's 7-year-old Jasmin, but she did know Mo, whom she found unreasonably jealous. If he saw Rachael even had a text from a girlfriend, he would go ballistic.
Mohamed Adan was unquestionably poor when he attacked Rachael Abraham in the early summer of 2022. He was unemployed and had no permanent residence. These may have been among the reasons defense attorneys repeatedly requested Adan not be kept in custody, including on charges of felony strangulation and violating the no-contact order with Abraham. That these incidents occurred before the passage of S.B. 48 speaks to a certain momentum in Portland, a thrust not to burden the accused unfairly, even violent ones, as they awaited trial.
Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt felt his office had fought hard to keep Mohamed Adan from re-victimizing Rachael Abraham. As far back as June, a criminal complaint against Adan stated that bail could be set at $60,000. In regard to the six Class C felonies against Adan, Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney MacKenzie Ludwig had written: “There are significant lethality factors on this case, which includes potential access to firearms, increase in physical violence and the severity of the physical violence. ... Victim believes offender capable of killing her.”
Ludwig had not prevailed. Judge Benjamin B. Johnston had let Adan out, the release agreement stating Adan must “wear GPS [and have] no contact w/ Rachael Angel Abraham or children.” This put in motion a two-month, multiple-arrest odyssey that left Abraham dead and Schmidt having to address what was by then the 60th murder of the year in Portland. “Mr. Adan’s intent to kill the victim was unambiguous,” he said, adding how this outcome would have been obvious to anyone who bothered to look into Adan’s arrest record — that you would be hard-pressed to find a more committed and recidivist abuser.
Yet Portland Freedom Fund had looked into Adan and seen things differently. Or maybe it hadn’t bothered to look. Maybe it considered strangling a woman and holding a gun to her head subjacent to its work as “a volunteer-run abolitionist organization currently dedicated to reducing harms perpetuated against our Black, Brown and Indigenous neighbors by the criminal justice system through posting bail so they may navigate their case from a position of freedom,” as its website stated.
Kristin Olson was trying to make sense of Adan’s multiple arrests and releases. A Portland litigation lawyer, she started with the first assault reported by Abraham in November 2021. More recent incidents included:
May 2: Adan punches Abraham in the head. Restraining order issued. June 24: Five counts felony strangulation. Two counts assault fourth degree. The criminal complaint from the DA’s office suggests bail of $60,000. Jennifer List of Metropolitan Public Defender is defense attorney. June 27: Judge Benjamin B. Johnston releases Adan for no bail.
Did bail drop from $60,000 to zero, or was it never set? Olson found documents that showed a release assistance officer interviewed Adan to determine whether he was eligible for release without bail. The officer determined that Adan was, and under his own discretionary power, the officer could have released him, if not for the domestic violence charges. On these, the officer would defer to the judge, who chose not to impose bail.
Olson kept digging — through Adan’s repeated violations of the no-contact order, the multiple arrest warrants, the four judges he appeared before in a five-week period: July 15: Adan is arraigned. Judge Stephen Bushong. July 26: Adan cuts off his GPS. Attacks Abraham. Bench warrant issued. Judge Michael Greenlick. Aug. 11: Adan arrested on charges of contempt of court and other violations. Aug. 11: Judge Angela Lucero sets bail at $20,000. Aug. 18: Jennifer List argues bail should be reduced from $20,000 to $1,000. Judge Jerry Hodson denies request. Aug. 20: Amanda Trujillo of Portland Freedom Fund posts $2,000 bond for the felony strangulations from June and the contempt violations from August. She also posts $3,000 bond for a suspended license violation in Clackamas County.
Olson wasn’t surprised Adan had been let go again and again. The releases had ramped up after Schmidt’s 2020 announcement he was not going to arrest most protesters. A local TV station had done a May-September tally of that year and found that of the over 1,000 protest-related arrests, charges were dropped more than 90% of the time.
“Portland Isn’t a Dumpster Fire. It’s Watching a Sunset Together,” read the Sept. 25 headline in the city’s major alt-weekly, commemorating an evening spent picnicking in the park in Northwest Portland. The article neglected to mention, even in a subsequent addendum, that picnic time had coincided with a 26-year-old woman being gunned down several yards away. If the editorial omission had been innocent enough, it nevertheless came off as a “look over here not there!” stratagem. Which seemed unwise, seeing as there were four homicides that weekend in the City of Roses.
If anyone had walked the walk Portlanders pledged to walk since the killing of George Floyd, and even before, it had been Amanda Trujillo. .. Portland Freedom Fund now found itself awash in cash. Changing its mission statement to “a volunteer-run abolitionist organization currently dedicated to reducing harms perpetuated against our Black, Brown and Indigenous neighbors” seemed more in step with the times, and the fund grew from a tiny nonprofit organization in a Portland exurb to a player on its main stage. With more money, the fund could bail out more people, posting a total of $619,000,..
The message hit the wrong note. Hate comments poured in. Trujillo tried again, explaining Adan had been referred by AYCO and that the fund had been “in contact with Mr. Adan throughout the time between his release and re-arrest and did not receive any indications for concern.” Strike two. Portland Freedom Fund board member Terrence Hayes sought to clear things up during an interview on Oregon Public Broadcasting. Hayes, who was black, agreed that Abraham’s murder was “horrific.” And yet the fund had received a recommendation from Adan’s lawyer and the judge had granted bail, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/a-murder-in-portland
A horror movie, resulting from deceived and power-hungry souls working to pervert principles that God ordained, and thus even fostering racism under the premise of being saviors of the oppressed.
Someone explain to me how we can live with these people as neighbors. I will wait patiently.
If you would like more information about what’s happening in Oregon, please FReepmail me. Please send me your name by FReepmail if you want to be on this list.