Oregon Police Look For Clues In Three Deaths

The shooting deaths of three young men on a residential street on the city’s northeast side left police mystified Thursday.

The killings outside a small gray house Wednesday night did not appear to be drug or gang related, said police Lt. Cliff Madison.

Investigators still were trying to identify one of the victims. The names of the other two were withheld until relatives could be notified.

The gunman remained at large.

Four men, believed to be in their late teens to early 20s, arrived in a silver Mercury Cougar and visited the house just before the gunfire erupted about 9:30 p.m.

The men began arguing loudly in Spanish on the front lawn, and as many as 15 shots were fired.

“I hit the floor,” neighbor Howard Hannon said Thursday.

“There were so many shots it sounded like a battalion,” said another neighbor, who didn’t want her name used.

When the gunfire ended, two men lay dead in front of the gray house. The third died in front of Hannon’s house, amid his trim flower beds of roses, marigolds and cosmos.

The gunman fled on foot, and the car was impounded.

Thursday morning, blood spatters still stained the short walk to the porch of the gray house. The blinds on the front window were closed.

The young woman who lives there with her husband and children, speaking through a door open only a crack, said no family members were involved in the shooting. She declined to say anything more.

She and four visitors came outside later with salt and a garden hose to wash the blood off the walk.