MAX Attacks

By Ian Jobling •  6/16/08

You don’t think of Portland, OR being a violent place, but there has been a stunning rash of random attacks on white passengers by non-whites in that city’s MAX municipal train system.

In the most recent incident, a white woman from Vancouver was assaulted by black teens. Welcome to America! The attack will be prosecuted as a hate crime.

An assault by five teenagers on a North Portland MAX train this week revived worries about mass transit safety since several high-profile incidents last winter.

Teenage boys and girls punched, used racial epithets and stole the purse of a 28-year-old Vancouver woman who was taking her first-ever MAX ride early Monday evening. The woman, who is white, had just had a conversation with the teens, who are African American and were harassing another woman, according to Portland police.

“It was completely traumatizing and absolutely horrifying for me,” said the Vancouver woman, who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation. “It seemed like forever.”

Last year, a Hispanic illegal alien teen beat a 71-year-old white man unconscious at a MAX station. Police suspected the attack was a gang initiation. There are more details here.

In the November attack, Gresham police said Chilcote was followed by three teens when he left the MAX train at the Gresham Central Transit Center. Chavez-Garcia taunted him by calling him an old man. With the others watching, Chavez-Garcia beat him, even after he lay motionless on the ground. A detective found Chilcote unconscious at a crosswalk near the station, at Northeast Eighth Street and Kelly Avenue, bleeding from the head.

Nine days after the attack, Chilcote spoke of it from a wheelchair at OHSU. He suffered double vision, and one side of his face was paralyzed. He had trouble hearing, speaking and swallowing…

[Chavez-Garcia’s attorney] said showing off may have had something to do with [the attack], but he also thinks alcohol and his client’s borderline low IQ contributed.

Chavez-Garcia started using marijuana and methamphetamines when he was 14 or 15. He stopped after seeing his best friend fatally shoot himself while high on meth.

“To cover the pain, he started drinking. He started knocking back 40s daily,” Bertoni said, referring to the 40-ounce beers the teen drank.

Chavez-Garcia will likely serve his time at the MacLaren Correctional Youth Facility in Woodburn. Although it’s unknown how he entered the country, he is not a citizen and he will likely be deported once he completes his sentence.

In February, three whites were injured by blacks in a racially-motivated attack at a MAX station:

Dawn Swallow, who has a black eye from the attack, told KATU News that “three tall black guys crossed the road and kept saying ‘you ain’t black, you ain’t black,’ and hit us.”

She was punched and knocked to the ground.

Her son, Tyler Swallow-Jones, said he went to help his mother back up when he was set upon by an attacker. He said he was hit in the head and fell to the ground.

While I was googling this subject, I came across this page where someone has diligently compiled stories about crime on the MAX. Here’s the page for 2008. There are at least fifty stories so far, and the year’s only half over. I haven’t looked at all the stories, but where the race of the criminal is mentioned, it seems it’s always a black or Hispanic.

There were 20 assaults and six robberies on the MAX system in the first 11 months of 2007.

In Portland, Oregon, home of nutty-crunchy Sierra Club types!

Pretty scary!

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