A $6 million lawsuit filed last week claims that two Gresham families repeatedly pleaded with the managers of their apartment complex and police — to no avail — to stop a knife-wielding neighbor who’d called them racist or misogynistic names while threatening to rape, paralyze and murder them.
The lawsuit, which lists The Landings at Morrison and Gresham police as defendants, states the families repeatedly sent the apartment’s management and police Ring doorbell videos over two to three months in summer 2023. The videos show then 19-year-old Dominic Austin swinging a knife back and forth, trying to open their locked front door while holding the knife and muttering racist slurs for Black people and a derogatory name for women. Two of the plaintiffs are Black women.
In some videos, Austin can be heard making statements such as “Do you want to get paralyzed, (expletive)? You’re gonna be wheelchair-bound” and “You are about to get murdered,” according to the suit.
The lawsuit says management served Austin and his father, who shared his apartment, eviction papers after the families emailed management at least 19 times over the course of 71 days. And police arrested Austin after the families and a friend phoned or texted them at least seven times over an 82-day span.
“The magnitude of failure to take the obvious and legally required steps to protect our clients from continuing and terrifying criminal threats is beyond belief,” said attorney Greg Kafoury, who is representing the families.
Representatives for The Landings at Morrison or their parent companies didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday or Tuesday. A spokesperson for the city, Sarah Cagann, declined to comment because of the pending litigation.
The lawsuits were filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court by a mother and her adult daughter, who lived in a unit near Austin’s, and a family that lived across from Austin. That family consisted of a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy, her husband and their toddler.
The lawsuit includes excerpts from their communications with apartment management. According to the suit, in one email that was sent more than a month before apartment management tried to evict Austin, the pregnant woman wrote she was worried she’d go into early labor because of the stress she felt from Austin’s frequent visits to her doorstep.
“We are afraid of leaving our apartment to even take our dog out or the trash,” the woman wrote. “I have to panic when my husband brings in the groceries. I fear that it is only a matter of time until they do something to me, my 2-year-old son or husband when we leave or return to our apartment.”
Days later, the adult daughter living in the other unit wrote that Austin was pushing her to her breaking point.
“I am sick and tired of being woke up at odd times through the night,” she said in an email that’s quoted in the lawsuit. “My anxiety is through the roof and the only feedback I get is to be safe, call 911 and security. I think I also am going to reach out to a lawyer because this is not OK.”
The lawsuit says a lawyer for the apartment complex sent Austin and his father an eviction notice on Sept. 8 to move out by Sept. 13. But Austin stayed in the apartment until police arrested him Sept. 19 in response to a 911 call from one of the women, according to the suit.
Austin was charged with a long list of crimes, including bias crime, menacing, unlawful use of a weapon, attempted burglary and violating stalking orders, which two of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit had filed against him. Austin’s criminal case, however, has been stalled because mental health professionals determined he was unfit to go to trial.
He was treated at the Oregon State Hospital but released from custody in April under the condition he live at a residential mental health facility in Portland. A judge ordered him to continue to take part in treatment, with a goal of restoring his mental competency to the point he can understand the legal process and his criminal case can proceed.
Austin is not listed as a defendant in the lawsuit.
— Aimee Green covers breaking news and the justice system. Reach her at 503-294-5119, agreen@oregonian.com or @o_aimee.
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