A 20-year-old man died from a gunshot wound suffered during an illegal street takeover where two other people also were injured by gunfire, Portland police said Wednesday.
Cameron Taylor, of Vancouver, was hit by a stray bullet Sunday night after he and a friend had headed over to the scene “to check out all the cars” at Marine Drive and Interstate 5, family friend Erin Russell said in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive. The friend then got Taylor in their car and tried to take him to get help.
Taylor died at 15 Northeast Broadway after his friend stopped there to try to provide aid, police said in a statement.
Police initially reported that they had responded to that address on a call about a suspected overdose but instead found a man who had been shot. Medical workers declared him dead at the scene.
Police released Taylor’s name Wednesday as the man who died on Broadway and later in the day said they learned from “many community members” that he had been shot at the street takeover.
Police earlier in the week described an event Sunday night that drew hundreds to I-5 and said the size of the crowd made it difficult for officers to investigate the shooting reported there.
Officers found one man shot in the area that night and learned another person had been driven to a hospital in Washington state with a gunshot wound, police said. Both suffered apparent non-life-threatening injuries. Police said a third person had been driven away with unknown gunshot wounds.
The medical examiner ruled Taylor’s death a homicide, police said. They asked anyone with information about the shooting to contact crimetips@police.portlandoregon.gov.
“Cameron loved cars; he was a great mechanic and was always helping friends and family work on their cars and build them,” Russell said. “Cameron was not a street racer. He drove an old pickup truck. He just loved cars.”
She described him as “a sweet kid, very kind and loving,” who never got in any trouble. “This is a devastating loss for the family and friends of Cameron.”
The shooting was part of spate of violence in Portland that left four people dead from Friday evening through Sunday.
Taylor was the 65th person to die in a homicide this year in Portland -- near the record pace of last year when 69 people had died in homicides by the end of August on the way to a peak of 92 killings, the most in the city in more than 30 years.
-- Margaret Haberman, 503-221-8375, mhaberman@oregonian.com