UPDATE July 2, 2024: A lawsuit has been filed against the apartment complex and Gresham police, claiming they didn’t act soon enough to stop Austin. Read that story here.
A 19-year-old Gresham man who was caught on Ring doorbell cameras slashing a knife in the air and threatening to rape, paralyze and murder his Black and female neighbors has been indicted for 33 alleged crimes, including hate crimes.
New video released Monday shows Dominic Austin repeatedly making threats that include racist and misogynistic slurs as he walked up to the front door of one of the women, who was in her third trimester of pregnancy. She lives in the same apartment complex as Austin.
“Want to get paralyzed, (slur)? Wheelchair-bound,” Austin said in one clip.
“You’re the (expletive) (slur) because you …will go nowhere ever in America,” he is heard saying in another.
Austin can be seen frequently holding a knife, jabbing it into the woman’s door, punching toward her Ring camera and trying to open the door, which was always locked.
Although Austin’s father hasn’t been charged, video also appears to show a man matching his description yelling slurs at the woman’s apartment door. In one clip, he removes a fire extinguisher from the outside of the woman’s home and takes it into the apartment he shares with Austin.
“Hope your house don’t catch fire,” he exclaims.
The woman told police that she was about to leave her apartment one day when she saw Austin standing outside her door with a knife, according to court papers. She said she has been afraid to leave her home and often stays inside instead of risking an encounter with Austin. She filed a stalking order.
Video released last month showed Austin making similar threats to two Black women – a mother and her adult daughter – who also lived in the same apartment complex near Southeast 202nd Avenue and Burnside Street in Gresham.
The threats continued over the course of months this summer until police arrested Austin on Sept. 19, after the women say they made repeated calls to police. Austin was charged with making threats and violating a stalking order. He pleaded not guilty.
It wasn’t until last Friday that a Multnomah County grand jury indicted Austin on accusations of more than 30 crimes, including bias crime, unlawful use of a weapon and attempted burglary for trying to enter their homes.
All three women enlisted the help of Portland civil attorney Greg Kafoury to advocate on their behalf. Kafoury said it appears Gresham police were slow to make an arrest because they chalked up Austin’s behavior to a mental health problem that Austin told them was already being addressed because he had a counselor.
“The police attitude seems to have been my clients had nothing to worry about because this is simply a mental health issue,” Kafoury said.
In a statement, Gresham police said given the criticisms they’ve heard about their handling of the case, they “will review our response to identify ways to improve our service to the community.” Police also said they understand “the unique impact bias crimes, in particular, have on victims.”
Kafoury also faults the apartment complex’s management for not acting on a clause in every tenant’s lease that allows management to immediately kick them out if they threaten serious violence against other tenants.
The apartment complex’s management didn’t return a request for comment Monday. But according to court papers, a lawyer for the company sent Austin and his father an eviction notice Sept. 8, saying Austin has repeatedly engaged in threatening behavior and his father had pepper-sprayed another tenant’s door. The letter was sent more than two months after all three women said the threats began.
“If this had happened in a different part of town, or if the knife-wielding man threatening to rape and murder my clients had been Black and my clients white, one might wonder whether these episodes would have been allowed to continue from late June to mid-September,” Kafoury said.
-- Aimee Green; agreen@oregonian.com; @o_aimee
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