One of the three Portland police officers who fired on an armed man in December as they attempted to arrest him outside Mall 205, ultimately killing him, said he acted to stop the man from killing someone else, after the man pointed a gun at police.
That testimony comes from Officer Brian Wheeler in grand jury transcripts released late last week that include additional details about what led police to fatally shoot 33-year-old Tyrone Johnson II on Dec. 27.
Officers John Bartlett, Adi Ramic and Wheeler together fired their weapons nine times as Johnson, a suspect in an earlier armed robbery, fled a Target parking lot to avoid arrest, according to the transcripts from May, when a Multnomah County grand jury cleared the officers of criminal wrongdoing in the shooting.
“I knew that I had to take action immediately to prevent him from killing somebody,” Wheeler testified. “He had the drop on us way before we ever had the drop on him.”
“A high-risk pedestrian stop”
The confrontation happened around 3:30 p.m. after Johnson visited the Mall 205 Target and employees there recognized him as a suspect in an armed robbery at the old Powell Boulevard Target. Employees called police and told store security to “not spook” Johnson, according to the transcripts.
Police, meanwhile, reviewed what they knew about Johnson, including that he was a suspect in a previous shooting that had happened within six months, that he had recently been released from custody to a residential treatment program but stopped attending after two days and that he had multiple warrants for his arrest.
Knowing this, officers told the grand jury they went to Mall 205 to arrest Johnson as he left the store.
“We would do a high-risk pedestrian stop on him,” Wheeler said, according to the testimony. “You kind of box somebody in to remove certain escape routes.”
But once Johnson came out, he spotted police nearby, ignored their commands and ran toward a nearby MAX stop, officers said. He tried to jump over a sidewalk railing but tripped and fell. As he got up, a T-Mobile employee who had been working nearby said Johnson pulled out a handgun and took cover behind a utility box.
“Get down, get down, get down,” he told customers and employees inside as he saw the firearm.
Pointed gun at officers
That’s also when Bartlett — a member of the Police Bureau’s Focused Intervention Team — spotted a black pistol in Johnson’s hand, he told the grand jury. He saw Johnson focus his firearm directly to the west where he believed other officers were positioned. However, Bartlett told the grand jury he never looked to check, keeping his eyes trained on Johnson.
Bartlett took cover behind the engine block of the patrol car and yelled at Johnson to drop the gun. He told the grand jury he believed Johnson heard him because Johnson turned in his direction and then aimed the gun at him. If Johnson had simply turned, Bartlett said it may have changed his decision-making. Bartlett was staring down the barrel of the gun, he told members of the grand jury.
“That was when I made the decision to fire,” Bartlett said.
After he fired one round, Ramic fired three and Wheeler fired five, according to the transcripts. All three officers told the grand jury they feared for their life or the lives of their fellow members. No officers were injured in the shooting.
Nearly 10 months after the shooting, the grand jury transcripts show for the first time that Johnson pointed a gun at officers after attempting to flee. Publicly until now, police had described what occurred in the mall’s parking lot only as a “confrontation.”
A driver who witnessed the shooting also testified that she saw Johnson aim a gun at officers.
Once Johnson was hit, officers saw him lying on the ground with his hand on top of his gun. Officer Tyler Wyatt told members of the grand jury he commanded Johnson to move away from the gun but got no response. “I don’t know if he’s trying to bait us in and then grab the gun,” he testified.
Within a couple of minutes, officers used a bulletproof shield and moved closer to Johnson, according to the transcript. They grabbed him and moved him away from the gun. Detective Joseph Corona told the grand jury Johnson had two gunshot injuries, in his left shoulder and his right eye. A medical examiner ruled the gunshot to his head killed him.
When asked by prosecutors whether less-lethal options were available, Bartlett said he had to act faster than that.
“I would have been like a sitting duck,” he told the grand jury. “That was completely out of the question.”
—Zaeem Shaikh covers the Portland Police Bureau and criminal justice issues for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach him at 503-221-4323, [email protected] or on X @zaeemshake.
