Update: Portland man arrested Friday in the Buckman neighborhood stabbing
The man killed in the Buckman neighborhood early Sunday morning worked as a server at Portland restaurant Ox and died sticking up for a friend, according to people close to the victim.
Colin Smith, 32, was stabbed to death outside of The High Dive bar on Southeast 12th Avenue by a man who was targeting an LGBTQ+ person in Smith’s group of friends, according to Smith’s ex-girlfriend Paulina Solis.
Solis, who was not at the bar, said Smith’s group had been having trouble with a bar patron who had inappropriately touched a member of their group. When the man started taking aim at a friend of Smith’s who is LGBTQ+, Smith began to defend the friend, Solis said. The man then stabbed Smith several times.
“He was a protector,” Solis said. “He died being the person that we all knew him to be.”
Police responded to The High Dive just north of Hawthorne Boulevard around 1:49 a.m. on Sunday, but the suspect in the stabbing had already fled, they said. Police have not released any additional details or announced any arrests.
Robert Jones, a co-owner of The High Dive, was not at the bar on Sunday morning, but heard from a bartender that a person leaving the bar may have exchanged words with Smith, who was in a patio area outside. Some kind of commotion ensued and by the time the bartender ran out to the scuffle, Smith was already on the ground, Jones said.
Jones described The High Dive as a neighborhood bar, frequented by regulars and members of the service industry. The bartender did not recognize the alleged assailant, Jones said.
“We just are so sickened by the whole thing,” Jones said. “We’re just really known for being a friendly neighborhood bar and nothing like this, remotely close to this, has ever happened there.”
Smith was raised in Salt Lake City, Utah and moved to Portland within the last decade. He loved to cook and to host dinner parties for his friends, Solis said. He had worked at Ox for over two years, and before that at Baby Doll Pizza and eventually hoped to open his own restaurant, sister Danielle Smith said.
“He was going to do something great,” she said.
Solis and Colin Smith started dating in 2020 and remained close friends after breaking up. Solis, who is a therapist, said he was one of the most empathetic people she’d ever met. He loved people from all walks of life and wasn’t afraid to tell people what they meant to him, she said. He used to call his mother, Julie Smith, twice a day to check in on her. He was her best friend.
“He was an amazing person,” Julie Smith said. “Was he perfect? No. But I always said that even when Colin was bad, he was good. Because he was honest.”
As a child, his mother would ask him and his sister what they wanted to be when they grew up. Her brother would tell his mom that he wanted to be “a rainbow.”
That story resonated with Solis, who heard it from her ex-boyfriend’s mother.
“Everyone felt like Colin was such a bright light for them,” Solis said. “If they knew that they were going to see Colin, it was something to look forward to… He was so loved.”
Greg Denton, an owner of Ox, described Smith as a “caretaker” of restaurant guests and fellow employees. Colin Smith would make sure staff working in the kitchen had enough water or soda to drink, would happily cover a table for a coworker if they wanted to leave early, or step up to take over a shift if someone wanted the day off, he said.
“He was a lovely, generous, amazing human that will be missed dearly and deeply, by not just ourselves but our entire Ox family,” Denton said.
Ox has been closed since Sunday to give staff time to grieve and heal, Denton said. He expects the restaurant to reopen sometime this week.
Colin Smith was a humble person, his mother said. He wouldn’t want flowers or the limelight. The best way to remember him, she said, is to be kind to others.
“There’s nothing any of us can do now, except to honor his legacy,” Julie Smith said. “Make a commitment to do something nice for somebody, even if that means just smiling as you’re walking down the street.”
A fatal stabbing July 2 in the 1400 block of Southeast 12th Avenue killed 32-year-old Colin Smith, a server at Ox restaurant.
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