Portland Freedom Fund bailed out man accused of violating domestic violence order. A week later, he was charged with murder

The Portland Freedom Fund posted bail for Mohamed Osman Adan in August after his arrest on allegations that he violated a domestic violence-related, no-contact order with the mother of his children.

One week later, Portland police found the woman, 36-year-old Rachael Angel Abraham, strangled to death and stabbed in her home. Adan, 33, is now charged in her murder.

Amanda Trujillo, the fund’s president, is listed as the person who bailed Adan out of jail on Aug. 20, posting $2,000, or 10% of the $20,000 bail, allowing him to get out of jail pending trial. He was ordered to remain on GPS monitoring.

The day before, Multnomah County Circuit Judge Jerry B. Hodson had ordered Adan to remain in custody and denied requests for his release or a lower bail.

Adan had been arrested Aug. 10 on a warrant alleging he had cut off a GPS monitor and entered Abraham’s townhouse on July 26. He faced pending allegations of strangulation and attempted assault against her from earlier this year, a no-contact order and a family abuse protective restraining order.

Multnomah County prosecutor Mackenzie M. Ludwig had alerted the judge to what she described as “significant lethality factors” involving Adan in arguing to keep Adan in jail.

Those included, she said, Adan’s potential access to guns, an increase in the severity of physical violence, his alleged threats to kill the woman who had recently left him, prior strangulation, his use of illegal drugs and repeated violations of court orders, including ditching his GPS monitor.

Trujillo did not return phone or email messages seeking comment on why she posted Adan’s bail.

In a news release last year, Trujillo said she co-founded the Portland Freedom Fund and described it as a volunteer-run abolitionist organization in Multnomah County that posts bail for Black, Indigenous, and people of color and people vulnerable to COVID-19. In prior interviews, she said the fund is supported through donations and grant support and its fiscal sponsor is Northwest Alliance for Alternative Media and Education.

In a statement Monday, the fund wrote that Adan was referred to the fund “as a financial provider for two small children with a letter of community support,” and the fund was in contact with Adan from the time of his prior release and re-arrest, “and did not receive any indications for concern,” the fund’s statement said.

At 1:12 a.m. Saturday, seven days after the Freedom Fund posted Adan’s bail, he again removed his GPS monitor, according to court records.

At 7:34 a.m. that day, a 911 call came from the townhouse associated with Abraham in the 3200 block of Southeast 92nd Avenue. The call disconnected and when a dispatcher attempted to call back, the call went to voicemail.

A few minutes later, a neighbor called, reporting a fight between the man and woman in the townhome. The neighbor said she saw Adan pushing a woman against an open second-story window and she heard screaming, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Around 10:40 a.m., Adan called 911, and said Abraham was dead.

Portland police responded to the home – the location that Adan was ordered not to go near in the no-contact order. When officers arrived, they found Adan downstairs with three young children, ages 2, 4 and 7.

Officers found Abraham’s body covered with a bedsheet in a child’s bedroom on the second floor, the carpet soaked in blood, according to the affidavit. The woman had a deep vertical cut that ran the length of her face, Deputy District Attorney Andrew C. MacMillan wrote in the affidavit. She also suffered cuts to her hands and bruises on her neck and arms, the prosecutor wrote.

A large kitchen knife was found near her body, the plastic handle missing but located a few feet away, according to the court records. An autopsy found Abraham died of strangulation, MacMillan wrote.

Despite an emergency dispatcher’s instructions on the phone urging Adan to perform CPR, he refused, according to the affidavit. Adan told police he was protecting the children, the affidavit said.

Adan now is in custody with no bail, accused of second-degree murder constituting domestic violence and unlawful use of a weapon, a knife, according to court records. Six of his last nine arrests are domestic violence-related involving Abraham, according to court records. He had been in the relationship for about five years from 2017 to 2022, according to court records.

In Abraham’s May 2 petition for a restraining order, she wrote that Adan punched her in the head as she slept, struck her in the eye and on May 1 “put a gun on my head and then he said he was playing.”

“Before, when I told him that I was leaving him,” she wrote in the petition, “he told me that he would kill me.”

“He violated multiple conditions of his release ultimately resulting in his alleged involvement in the death of the victim of his pending domestic violence cases,” according to Amie Banta of the county’s Close Street Supervision Program that monitors defendants on pretrial release.

Ramla Adan, Mohamed Adan’s sister, described Abraham as “a kind, warmhearted woman. A lovely person.” She had two of six children with Mohamed Adan, according to Ramla Adan.

“All that she cared about was her children,” Ramla Adan said. “They’re all she thought about.” The children are now staying with family members.

The prosecutors who handled the domestic violence charges against Mohamed Adan are greatly disturbed by the Freedom Fund’s decision to bail him out after they had argued for his continued detention, said Elisabeth Shepard, a spokesperson for the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office.

They asked what criteria the fund uses to determine which defendants to help. A simple review of public court records would reveal the ongoing domestic violence allegations, and Abraham’s increasing fear that Adan would kill her based on his threats, Shepard noted.

“I am deeply concerned by the circumstances that led to Mohamed Osman Adan’s release,” District Attorney Mike Schmidt said in a statement. “Our prosecutors aggressively pursued a high bail amount in this case. Mr. Adan’s intent to kill the victim was unambiguous. After the judge set Adan’s bail, the Portland Freedom Fund undermined our efforts and the efforts of the court to save the victim’s life by using their resources to bail him out.”

Schmidt said judges consider a defendant’s ability to pay when imposting bail. “The action taken by the Portland Freedom Fund circumvented this, with tragic results,” he said. “We offer our deepest condolences to the family of the victim, and will dedicate our efforts to the full prosecution of this matter.”

The $20,000 bail is the highest for the alleged violation of a domestic violence no-contact court order, according to Shepard.

Former state Sen. Margaret Carter said Abraham, who she knew as Rachael Manwaren about 12 years ago, became like a goddaughter to her after she took her in to her home in Portland for three to four years when Carter’s granddaughter met the young woman while attending Lane Community College in Eugene. She hadn’t had contact with her in recent years, however. Carter said that while the Freedom Fund’s aim may be to help people who are disadvantaged, she questioned why the fund’s leadership wouldn’t find out more about the case and check out the full background of the person they’re providing bail assistance to.

“I’m just really angry,” Carter said. “This woman did not deserve what happened to her.”

The fund said it “seeks to limit the number of persons held pretrial solely for inability to pay the bail as determined by the court.” It fulfills requests to cover bail on an individual basis, “with a focus on reducing harm,” the fund’s statement said.

“Our thoughts are with the families and communities affected by this tragedy, particularly the children who have effectively lost both parents,” the fund’s statement said. The fund said it will work to support those impacted by the violence.

Last year, the Portland Freedom Fund posted 10% of the $2.1 million bail set for an Indiana man accused of traveling to Portland in 2020 to engage in violence and vandalism during protests, including the throwing of an explosive device towards police and smashing of windows at the Oregon Historical Society. After he was released from a county jail, he was rearrested by U.S. marshals and charged in federal court.

When a third party bails someone out, that person is responsible for the defendant’s subsequent actions, according to the district attorney’s office. That means the case could lead to a civil action.