A 14-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl were wounded by gunfire early Thursday morning while sitting in a parked car at the Rocky Butte Natural Area.
Paulette Holley, who lives on the 3100 block of Northeast Rocky Butte Lane, told The Oregonian/OregonLive that her Ring security camera woke her up at around 2:30 a.m. when it detected motion and loud music outside. She said she heard gunfire shortly before 3 a.m. as a car drove down her block.
Bullets hit at least two houses and two vehicles on the block, according to police.
Three other unidentified children between the ages of 12 and 14 were also in the parked car at the time of the shooting but were uninjured, according to Sergeant Kevin Allen, Portland Police spokesperson.
Shortly after the gunfire ended, Holley heard a knock on her house’s front door.
“(The younger boy) came up and asked for water, and at first I went, ‘Nope,’ and closed the door, but then I went, ‘Wait a minute, this is a kid,’” Holley said.
She opened the door again, and she and her partner tried to aid and console the children until police arrived.
According to Allen, at least 38 rounds were fired, and 11 hit the car with the children in it.
The 14-year-old boy was shot in the shoulder and is being treated at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center for serious injuries, KPTV reported. The 12-year-old girl’s back apparently was grazed by a bullet. She was treated at the scene.
Footage from Holley’s Ring camera shows the children telling officers they don’t live in the neighborhood.
The older brother drove the car with the other juveniles into the area and parked it in the lot near the bottom of the park. When Holley asked why the children were there so late, she said they responded that they were just “having fun.”
Police have not publicly identified the children or said what neighborhood they live in. No arrests have been made in the shooting.
Holley, who moved into the Butte neighborhood in February, said it’s not uncommon for there to be noise and other disturbances coming from the park late at night, but that there hadn’t been a shooting there since she’d arrived.
The most recent reported shooting in the Rocky Butte Natural Area was in June 2021, when a 20-year-old man was shot and died from his injuries.
-- Adriana Gutierrez; agutierrez@oregonian.com
Our journalism needs your support. Please become a subscriber today at OregonLive.com/subscribe.
Ad Choices