A 29-year-old man accused of trying to break into an Aloha home to kill the family inside — including two children younger than 5 — is being held without bail as neighbors press Washington County officials to keep him locked up for good. Daniel Lee Rose was arrested shortly after midnight on August 11 on Southwest Deline Court, where police say he cracked open a home's front door while looking for a kitchen knife to carry out the killing.
According to KATU, a woman inside the home called 911 to report the attempted break-in, and a Beaverton police officer spotted Rose nearby shortly afterward. Police said Rose admitted to the attempted break-in and told authorities he was having delusions and hearing voices. The family — two parents and their two children under 5 — was not injured. Rose did not know the people living in the home, according to the station's report.
Rose was arraigned on four counts of attempted aggravated murder, along with attempted burglary and criminal mischief, and is expected back in court on August 18. His attorney has not responded to KATU's request for comment, and Washington County's district attorney was expected to be available for comment the week after the outlet's report.
A Decade-Long Pattern of Violence and Delusion
Court records indicate Rose has been arrested at least six times in the past decade for crimes including trespass, burglary, assault, harassment and resisting arrest, per the same account. He was convicted in 2017 after pleading guilty to second-degree assault stemming from a 2016 random stabbing case, for which he was sentenced to four years in prison. In court filings from that case, his defense attorney said Rose believed he was communicating with dead people and suffered active hallucinations, and did not understand his Miranda rights — though he was ultimately found fit to proceed, according to court documents cited by a Facebook community post detailing his case history.
That pattern repeated in the years that followed. Charges brought against Rose in 2021 for assault and menacing, and in 2022 for burglary, coercion and harassment following a disturbance at a Hillsboro recovery facility, were repeatedly dismissed after court evaluations found him unfit to stand trial, according to court records. In the current case, Rose told responding deputies that auditory delusions instructed him that if he had to save the world, he should go murder somebody, according to court documents.
Why Rose Wasn't Already Behind Bars
The father of the targeted family told KATU he hopes the justice system will finally keep Rose off the streets and get him the treatment he needs. His attorney has previously argued Rose had maxed out the time he was legally allowed to spend at Oregon State Hospital, a claim tied to a landmark 2022 federal ruling that reshaped how Oregon handles defendants found unfit for trial.
Under that order, issued by U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman, the Oregon Health Authority says the state hospital must cap so-called aid-and-assist commitments at 90 days for misdemeanors, six months for nonviolent felonies and one year for violent felonies, regardless of whether a defendant ever becomes competent to stand trial. That federal mandate builds on Oregon Senate Bill 295, enacted in 2021, which restructured state law to cap a defendant's total commitment at three years or the maximum sentence for the underlying crime, whichever is shorter.
A System Under Statewide Strain
The tension between those release mandates and public safety concerns has become a flashpoint across Oregon. Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton and other local law enforcement officials have warned that the federal stay caps force severely mentally ill defendants back into county jails or community release without adequate secure facilities, according to the Washington County government. By 2019, criminal defendants held under aid-and-assist orders made up more than 40% of the state hospital's total patient population, according to the Oregon Health Authority, crowding out civil commitments and straining capacity statewide.
To cope with the backlog, Washington County has set up a specialized court docket and a Rapid Fitness to Proceed Program aimed at speeding up competency evaluations and shortening jail stays for mentally ill defendants, per county officials. The strain has surfaced in other high-profile Oregon cases too — a Portland street shooter was committed to Oregon State Hospital after being found guilty except for insanity in a 2022 shooting spree driven by severe untreated delusions.
For neighbors on Southwest Deline Court, the debate over hospital caps and court dockets is secondary to a more immediate demand: that Rose not be released again. Aloha residents have urged Washington County justice officials to keep him jailed, arguing his long history of unprovoked violence and repeated findings of incompetency make him too dangerous to return to the community.
