2017 Portland train attack

At about 4:30 p.m. PDT on May 26, 2017, Jeremy Joseph Christian fatally stabbed two people and injured a third on a MAX Light Rail train[13] after he was confronted for directing what the Portland Police Bureau's report later said "would best be characterized as hate speech toward a variety of ethnicities and religions" at two girls on a Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) light-rail train.[8][10] A witness reported that Christian used anti-Muslim slurs and "was screaming that he was a taxpayer, that colored people were ruining the city, and he had First Amendment rights".[13] Portland police described Christian "as yelling and ranting and raving a lot of different things, including what we characterized as hate speech or biased language".[14]

At the time, although not at its rush-hour peak, the train car was crowded, with all the seats filled and some passengers standing.[13] As the man continued ranting, the train operator was heard on the loudspeaker, saying "Whoever is creating the disturbance needs to exit the train immediately."[13] The man continued, however,[13] directing his tirade at a 17-year-old Muslim Somali girl, who was wearing a hijab, and her non-Muslim friend, a black girl, age 16.[15][16][17] The man told the girls to "go back to Saudi Arabia", to get out of "his country", and "said they were nothing and they should kill themselves".[15] He also reportedly said that "Muslims should die."[17] Fearful, the pair moved to the back of the train as Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, and Micah David-Cole Fletcher—stepped in to intervene in an attempt to de-escalate the situation.[13][14][15] According to a witness, Namkai-Meche told Christian in an angry voice: "You need to get off this train. Please, get off this train."[13] The witness said that the men attempted to form a barrier between Christian and the girls. Then Micah David-Cole Fletcher gave him "a slight push or shove" in an attempt to move him away. Christian fell backward and Fletcher pushed him again. Christian said: "Touch me again, and I'm going to kill you."[13] Namkai-Meche was filming with his phone and appeared to be smiling in a video of the event. According to police, Christian then stabbed Ricky Best, who was nearby, and Namkai-Meche and Fletcher by slashing them with a knife.[18] The stabbings happened within less than 12 seconds. At the Hollywood/Northeast 42nd Avenue Transit Center, passengers fled the car,[13] as did Christian. He ran into the Hollywood neighborhood, chased by other passengers who had called 9-1-1.[17]

After Fletcher was stabbed, a man rushed to him and rendered first aid.[19] Three other men gave first aid to Best until EMS personnel arrived.[13] Medics were unable to revive Best and he was declared dead at the scene; Namkai-Meche died later at a local hospital.[13] The two girls also fled the train following the incident,[10] leaving their belongings behind.[17] After the attack, the station and MAX Light Rail trains were shut down in both directions for several hours.[14]

Following their arrival at the station,[14] police were able to locate Christian. A group of at least eight officers arrested him "on the north side of Providence Portland Medical Center on an access road running along Interstate 84, just east of 47th Avenue, at 4:48 p.m.".[18] According to a police affidavit filed subsequently in court, during the arrest Christian threw a folding knife with a 3.75-inch (95 mm) blade that hit a police car and bounced off of it.[20] The police affidavit also states that patrol car video footage shows Christian saying after his arrest, "I just stabbed a bunch of motherfuckers in the neck ... I can die in prison a happy man",[21] and about one of the men on the train who had confronted him, he said, "That's what liberalism gets you."[20]

Christian was booked into the Multnomah County jail.[22] The FBI assisted Portland police in the investigation.[23] Renn Cannon, of the Portland FBI field office, said at the time, "It's too early to say whether last night's violence was an act of domestic terrorism or a federal hate crime."[24]

In the early morning of June 2, 2017, police arrested 51-year-old George Elwood Tschaggeny, who lived in a small homeless camp near the platform where the train stopped after the attack. According to police and prosecutors, Tschaggeny removed the wedding band from Best's finger and stole Best's backpack and wallet. He was arrested after police viewed surveillance video showing the theft and obtained a community tip on the thief's identity. According to police, he was wearing Best's ring when he was arrested and had the backpack and contents of Best's wallet.[25][26] Tschaggeny was a heroin addict.[27][28] He was arraigned on charges of identity theft, second-degree abuse of a corpse, first-degree theft and tampering with physical evidence.[29] After a guilty plea on November 14, 2017, he was sentenced to 13 months in jail followed by five years of probation[28] and court-supervised drug treatment.[27]

Jeremy Joseph Christian had been convicted previously of kidnapping and the robbery of a convenience store in May 2002, and he was sentenced to 90 months in prison for that offense.[20] During the robbery, he wore a ski mask, wielded a .38-caliber revolver, and handcuffed the store owner to a pole in the store; he was apprehended several blocks away from the store.[51][52] Christian was also arrested in 2010 on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and theft, but those charges were later dropped.[53] Christian "told officials he is a transient and doesn’t know the last time he had a permanent address."[54] He held extremist views, posting neo-Nazi, antisemitic, and far-right material on social media,[55][56] as well as material indicating an affinity for political violence.[15] Christian described himself as a white nationalist.[3] The Oregonian noted that Christian made many contradictory Facebook posts, but that such contradictions are typical of extremists. It said his posts "reveal a comic book collector with nebulous political affiliations who above all else seemed to hate circumcision and Hillary Clinton". At times he expressed support for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, although he wrote that he did not vote.[56][57] According to friends and acquaintances, Christian's actions were becoming increasingly unstable, and he was in need of mental help, but he had not been given a formal diagnosis.[58]

In April 2017, Christian wrote, "I just Challenged Ben Ferencz (Last Living Nuremberg Persecutor [sic]) to a Debate in the Hague with Putin as our judge. I will defend the Nazis and he will defend the AshkeNAZIs [a reference to European Jews]."[59] He praised Timothy McVeigh in an online posting on April 19, the anniversary of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.[56][60] He also "posted conspiracy theory memes from the right-wing Alex Jones Channel".[56]

According to The Portland Mercury, Christian was a "known right-wing extremist and white supremacist".[61] He had participated in various alt-right rallies in Portland.[55] One month before the stabbing, Christian appeared at the right-wing March for Free Speech in Portland's Montavilla Park, which was organized by Patriot Prayer.[62] He wore a Revolutionary War-era flag of the United States and carried a baseball bat, which police confiscated. He gave Nazi salutes and used a racial slur at least once.[61][63] At the event, Christian was videotaped shouting "Die, Muslims!"[56] The day before the killings, Christian had made racial threats on another train, threatened a conductor, and hurled a bottle at a black woman who then maced him, as seen on cell phone videos.[64] Christian told police that he had dropped out of high school but later earned his high school equivalency and took classes at Portland Community College for a year. He identified himself to police as a transient who did "not know the last time he had a permanent address" and lived with friends and family.[52]

Ricky John Best, 53, of Happy Valley, died at the scene. He was a technician for the City of Portland's Bureau of Development Services, a U.S. Army veteran, and a father of four children.[65][66] In 2012, he retired from the Army after more than twenty years of service.[65]

Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, of Ashland, died at a hospital shortly after the attack. He had recently graduated from Reed College with a degree in economics and worked for the Cadmus Group consulting firm.[65][66][67] A passenger who helped him reported his last words: "Tell everyone on this train I love them."[13]

Micah David-Cole Fletcher, 21, survived and was treated at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center for serious but not life-threatening wounds, specifically a knife injury to his throat.[65][68] The attacker severed Micah's left jugular vein,[65] while narrowly missing his carotid artery by one millimetre (0.039 in). Fletcher was released from the hospital in time to attend Christian's arraignment on May 30, 2017.[69] Fletcher, a student at Portland State University, won a poetry contest in 2013 while he was a junior in high school with a poem about Islamophobia in the United States.[70]

Christian and Fletcher had both attended a "free speech" rally in Montavilla about a month prior to the attack. Christian was with a right-wing group, while Fletcher was a counter-protester.[71]

Destinee Mangum, one of the two girls harassed by the assailant, expressed her gratitude to the three men who stepped in to help her.[15]

• 2016 Minneapolis shooting
• 2017 Olathe, Kansas shooting
• List of right-wing terrorist attacks
• Stabbing of Timothy Caughman
• We Choose Love

• Portland man arrested for murder, intimidation in MAX train hate speech incident at Wikinews