PORTLAND, Ore. — The Portland Police Bureau on Friday confirmed the identity of a man shot and killed in a confrontation with officers outside Mall 205 on Wednesday. KGW spoke briefly with the mother Tyrone Lee Johnson II, 33, on Thursday.
As of Thursday afternoon, Tonya Portis told KGW that she hadn't been notified by police of her son's death, but The Oregonian/OregonLive had already reached out to her and identified Johnson in a story. She said detectives contacted her late in the afternoon and requested to meet.
"Nobody is telling me anything," Portis said. "He was just over at my house that day. He went and dropped off some clothes and said, 'Mom, I’ll be back.' And I never heard from my son again."
Portis said that she wanted to know what happened leading up to the shooting, because available video only showed her son running from officers.
According to a statement from PPB, officers responded just after 3:30 p.m. to a large department store at the mall. The officers were told that the suspect in a previous robbery was shoplifting at the store. Johnson had an active arrest warrant, the agency said.
Members of PPB's Focused Intervention Team, one of the city's two gun violence teams, responded to assist officers from the East Precinct.
The officers showed up as Johnson was leaving the store, and surveillance video obtained by KGW from a nearby business shows Johnson sprinting through the parking lot as police vehicles arrive. The video does not show what Johnson does next, but Portland police said that there "was a confrontation" between him and the officers, with multiple officers opening fire.
Johnson went down, and PPB said that officers requested help from paramedics. As more first responders arrived on the scene, PPB said that officers approached Johnson and confirmed that he was dead.
"I come from a background of police and fire ... never once would I think this would happen to my own child," Portis told KGW. "Being taken out by the police, especially when we have stun guns and non-lethal bullets. Why did you not reach for those?"
According to PPB, the officers found a gun next to Johnson's body. The agency has not indicated whether Johnson displayed a gun or fired during the incident, but no officers were injured.
Three officers fired their weapons — two from the Focused Intervention Team and one from the East Precinct. All three have been placed on paid administrative leave while PPB conducts an internal investigation of the shooting. After the investigation, the case will go before the Police Review Board, a body composed of community members, police officers and members of the Independent Police Review Division.
Johnson's criminal history
Oregon court records do not include a warrant for Johnson's arrest, but do show that a deputy district attorney in Klamath County filed a motion to revoke his probation in late June. Johnson's parole officer reported that he had failed to secure permission for a change of residence and failed to report as required under the conditions of his probation.
The filing from Johnson's parole officer details his criminal history up to that point, stretching back to 2010. Amid multiple convictions for burglary, firearms possession, assault and robbery over the years, Johnson struggled to uphold the terms of his probation, the officer wrote — often resulting in new arrests and convictions, and seemingly connected to a drug problem.
After a jail stay in 2022, the parole officer notes, Johnson turned up for a probationary visit and said "he was interested in doing residential treatment." But within two weeks, he'd shoplifted from a Fred Meyer and punched a loss prevention officer in the head.
For a time after his release from jail in March 2023, the parole officer notes that Johnson made an effort to check in and again expressed interest in residential treatment. But by May, he was found in violation of his parole by contacting a woman he'd been ordered not to contact, receiving 45 days in jail before an early release to treatment. That didn't last long, according to the document.
"Mr. Johnson has sabotaged an golden opportunity to get (himself) into residential rehab to address his longstanding history with substance abuse by walking out of treatment after two days," the parole officer wrote.
By the time prosecutors requested an arrest warrant in late June, Johnson's parole officer said that Johnson had stopped reporting and disappeared. That was the last time he surfaced in court records prior to the deadly shooting on Dec. 27.
Portland police said in a statement they won't release information about the prior robbery to which they say Johnson was connected because they said there are multiple ongoing investigations.