PORTLAND, Ore. — A Portland woman is nursing a severed ACL, a torn MCL, torn ligaments in her left ankle and a bone fracture in her left knee, among other injuries, after she said a naked, screaming man attacked her on a crowded Northeast Portland MAX platform in broad daylight.
Ellen Greer remembers the February 6 ordeal well.
It happened around 4:30 in the afternoon, and she recorded the minutes leading up to it with her cell phone.
"This the MAX station here at 7th," Greer narrates, as the camera rolls. "There’s a naked man, angry, fighting with the TriMet police."
The man, standing naked on the MAX tracks at Holladay Park, can be heard calling a black officer the n-word and yelling, "You’re a slave!"
In the video, he yells about Satan and the devil, at one point screaming at a guard, "I’m gonna take your f***ing teeth out right now! Lay down! Lay down, n****!"
"It’s a mental health crisis," narrated Greer.
After more than two minutes, she stopped recording.
"I kind of wanted to go talk to the officer and see if anyone had called the police," she told KGW during an interview in her apartment Saturday. "I went toward the officer, and I started digging around for my pepper spray. ... I pulled that out to feel safer. I think that’s what got this guy's attention."
Greer said the man started slowly walking toward her.
"He was shouting really horrible things that I can’t repeat on television. He was calling women whores and sluts," she said. "So when he saw me, immediately, he just zeroed right in on me."
She said the man threatened to "grab that red hair" and rape her.
An affidavit of probable cause said Greer also told a police officer on scene the man yelled he had HIV/AIDs and demanded she take her clothes off.
"I was scared out of my mind, so I started backing away," Greer said.
He lunged.
"Suddenly he grabbed my hair, just like he said he would, and twisted me, and I end up on the ground, and he’s on top of my leg, his full body weight," she said. "I couldn’t see anything, and he has me in this headlock, and my hair’s in the way. I just start screaming 'Help me! Help me! He’s breaking my leg! Help me! Get him off me!' I was terrified for my life."
Greer said about four or five people pulled the man off, while she screamed in pain.
"I’m a girl so I had Barbies, and you would sometimes bend their knees backward, you know? That’s what it felt like," Greer said.
Police arrived soon after and arrested the man, identified as 36-year-old Theodore Metzger.
It would be his second trip to jail that day.
According to court documents and staff at the Multnomah County bookings office, Metzger had been taken into custody around 6 a.m. February 6 for “unlawfully and intentionally” damaging property of Portsmouth Union Church, on North Lombard Street near North Fiske Avenue.
He was charged with criminal mischief, a misdemeanor.
Church staff tell KGW the incident happened while Metzger was staying in a warming shelter, housed by Portsmouth and operated by Do Good Multnomah, a non-profit that works to help homeless veterans.
Staff at the church couldn’t give details Sunday.
Directors at Do Good Multnomah haven’t yet responded to KGW’s inquiries.
Within two hours after being taken into custody, staff in the bookings office confirm Metzger had met with "recog staff," who determined whether an inmate is fit to be released, which he was.
Records show a court date was set for the next day.
By 8:30 that night Metzger was back in jail for Greer’s attack.
New charges include fourth-degree assault, menacing, harassment and three counts of interfering with public transportation.
Bookings office staff confirm Metzger has been in custody since, adding he’s currently being held in a hospital.
A Mental Health Consultation dated February 20 is stamped with case numbers for both February 6 incidents.
Greer expects to undergo months of rehab and surgery.
"This guy can’t be running around the streets," Greer said Saturday, braces on her knee and ankle. "The sad thing is he needs help. Whatever it is, whether it’s a mental health issue or drug abuse, both ... I don’t have any spite for this man. I want him to get the help he needs."