The Oregonian is reporting that police have responded to a shooting in Tualatin. I’m headed out there to see what’s going on.
Update, 1:32pm: The Mercury just spoke with Joe Dennis, an office worker who is barricaded inside the building across the street.
“We had somebody outside and the police said go inside and lock your office doors,” says Dennis, who works right across Martinazzi Street from the shooting. He’s still locked in the building right now.
“It’s unsettling for most people,” he says. “A lot of people are just locking themselves in their offices and just concerned that the gunman might make it into our building.”
“What we’re hearing is that right across the street, either somebody was shot, either the Legacy Lab or the State Farm building,” he says. “I’ve heard rumors that there were anything from five to ten people shot, and that the gunman was killed.”
“It’s hard to imagine what would cause someone to do this,” he says. “The first thing we thought was that maybe some kind of insurance claim might have failed and they might have gone crazy, or that perhaps something attached to the medical lab happened, but I can’t imagine what that might be.”
“Initially we saw a lot of police come up on the scene and block off the roads, then some tactically equipped law enforcement come up on the Legacy Building and establish the perimeter,” he says. “We started to see them pull out their assault rifles and then realized that it was a little more serious.”
“It’s crazy, it’s not fun,” says Madhavan Chidanbaram, who is visiting the office from India, also locked inside the office this afternoon. “In our country we have our own problems, but people don’t get guns so easily in my home country. It’s not right and it’s not safe.”
“Initially I just saw a lot of police cars, and then a lot of emergency response vehicles, fire trucks, ambulances, a lot of officers on foot carrying shields, wearing vests, going into the strip mall. It looked like there was going to be a lot of activity,” says Natalie Ruiz, another co-worker of Dennis’s. “A news crew has finally arrived, now.”
“We locked the doors, there were some people outside smoking and they were told to come back in the office and lock the doors,” she says. “It was a little bit frightening. We didn’t know whether to just come back inside and get on with our work, or how serious it was.”
Update, 1:37 The O is reporting two dead, two injured. One shooting victim ran across the street to a Subway, covered in blood, according to our office-workers.
Update, 2:07 Tualatin Police Chief Kent Barker says the shooting happened at 11:45am, when a single male entered the Legacy Medical Lab with a rifle, shot and killed one person and wounded two others. The suspect was found dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. No identities are being released yet. Local schools and businesses were locked down for a brief period but all the security has been lifted. There’ll be another press conference at 4 o’clock.
What kind of sandwich did the guy get?
Sorry.
Chin up Kiala, don’t let dead bodies ruin your ability to be a snide asshole.
@Kiala: you don’t have to apologize, it is never too soon to make jokes like that. I’m even gonna go a step further and sympathize with the shooter less than 2 hours after it happened.
I sued a company in Tualatin when I was 17, (and won. They refused to honor the warranty on a computer, so I’d pretty much bought a $3000 paperweight.) My mother had to threaten a company in that city a few years later with a lawsuit when she took her sewing machine in for maintenance, and they said it was broken and weren’t willing to return it and told her she should buy a new one. (They were most likely trying to steal it, there was nothing wrong with it when she got it back, (fortunately,) they just don’t make sewing machines like that anymore so the thing is quite valuable.) It isn’t like we are sue happy, it was both the only time for either of us. And then something happened to my dad there, (I don’t remember what exactly, it wasn’t that important in the big scheme of things,) and that was the final straw for the city. No one in my family has been back since, (more importantly: I’ve been at my desk all day and I’ve got witnesses to prove it. That and I’m not dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound.)
Huh? You got annoyed with a computer store and a sewing machine store in Tualitin, and hence you can empathize with someone who shot and killed their other half in what appears to have been a domestic, on the basis that it happened in the same city?
That’s not a leap of logic, it’s an ocean-sized gap…
I “get annoyed” when I’m dealing with petty criminals? Why yes, yes I do. I think there is something in the air in the city or something that makes the people there want to commit crime. To say that someone might have shot someone in another one of the robberies that appear to happen in that city isn’t a leap of logic at all, it is what any sane person would expect to happen sooner or later.
Well, this comment thread has certainly gone in a classy direction.
This wasn’t a robbery. It was a domestic dispute that happened to take place at her workplace.
And if you feel like shooting someone when you get annoyed, you should be locked away for life.
@Stu: Because people should be locked away for life due to their feelings? What is this? Some kind of precog Minority Report bullshit? Go DIAF.
POSTING IN AN EPIC THREAD.
@atomic: I was just trying to top Kiala’s comment.
@Stu: I didn’t say that I was going to shoot anyone. But people shoot petty criminals all the time. Someone breaks into your house and you shoot them? That happens all the time, and no jury would convict you for it either.
Well I’m of the opinion that shooting someone dead is murder / manslaughter, no matter what the reason, and is never justified. I know that puts me in a minority position in this country, and it’s not the kind of thing that it’s productive to try to change people’s minds about, but there you have it.
@Stu: Can you explain your position using reason and logic? Just throwing out random seemingly-crazy opiinions will never change anyone’s mind.
Graham – I’m not getting into that one… It’s like debating religion, no amount of facts and logic ever change people’s minds (because they can all be interpreted in different ways), so it’s pointless…
All I expect is (as with religion!) that people realize and respect that there are opposing opinions out there.
See, it’s hilarious to Kiala because it wasn’t a Portlander.
I’d love to see her post the same sentiment in a thread about someone who was killed in a crosswalk or on a bike, because then people might start to think she’s an asshole.
@Stu: I’m not arguing that what they did wasn’t murder, (it isn’t manslaughter, walking into a building with rifle is premeditated.) What I’m pointing out is that by the law of averages, you push too many people too far, and eventually one of them snaps and starts shooting, and I’m not surprised that it happened.
@atomic I started the classy direction!
@kiala: Yes, but I took it all the way and blamed the victim for their own death based solely on the fact that it happened to happen to a city where some bad things happened to me 12 years ago. And I got some people to argue about it, on both sides of that very stupid line! If that isn’t some serious trolling, I don’t know what is.
@Matthew D and @Kiala – Get a room!
The reason this is so compelling is because it is, in fact, so uncommon. I’m glad I wasn’t there.