A Portland man named Jahan is recovering with bullet and bone fragments scattered throughout his body after he was shot trying to break up a fight in downtown Portland earlier this month. He says the moment the bullet hit felt like a punch to the chest, and that his first thought afterward was of his children.
According to KPTV, Jahan was walking near Northwest Broadway and Davis on August 1 when he noticed two men fighting another man. He tried to intervene, and in the chaos, a gunman shot him before fleeing with the second man. Jahan chased the pair briefly before he was taken to the hospital, per the outlet's report.
Jahan told the station he still has a bullet lodged in his body and is waiting to find out whether doctors can safely remove it. The bullet ricocheted inside him, he said, and he now deals with daily pain as bone and bullet fragments remain scattered throughout his frame. A donation page has since been set up to help him continue healing.
A Plea to Stop the Violence
Jahan said he did not want to die in the streets, and that the violence in the city needs to stop. He said he thought about his children in the instant he realized he had been shot — a detail that underscores just how quickly an attempt to help a stranger turned into a fight for his own life.
Police have not announced an arrest and describe the shooting investigation as ongoing, per the same KPTV account. Officers have encouraged anyone with information to contact detectives as they continue working the case.
Where This Shooting Fits Citywide
The Portland Police Bureau has investigated 320 shootings since January, according to PPB statistics cited by KPTV, even as the bureau reports shootings are down 12 percent this year compared to last. That decline tracks with a broader multi-year trend: a report released by the City of Portland found homicides fell 56% year-to-date in 2026 compared to 2025, while non-fatal shooting victims dropped from 453 in 2022 to 171 by mid-2026. The city logged 525 total shooting incidents in 2025, a 30% drop from 2024 and the lowest annual total in six years, officials told KPTV in January.
Even so, summer brought a spike. Portland recorded 59 shooting incidents in June — a 13% jump from June 2025 and the highest single-month total since January 2025 — which pushed police to run a multi-agency Summer Cool Down Mission in July, according to KGW. That operation led to 11 arrests and seven recovered firearms.
Old Town Corridor Under Watch
The stretch where Jahan was shot sits inside a stretch the city's Ceasefire program has flagged as a high-priority intervention zone, given elevated rates of shooting injuries and fatalities compared to other parts of Portland. It is a corridor Hoodline has covered before: in April, a late-night fight escalated into gunfire on Northwest Flanders Street, just three blocks away, leading to an arrest on attempted murder charges near Flanders. Nine days after Jahan was shot, another man was critically wounded in a downtown shooting near Southwest Market Street and Southwest 4th Avenue that drew 16 police units, with no suspect immediately in custody.
Cases like Jahan's typically fall to the Portland Police Bureau's Focused Intervention Team and Enhanced Community Safety Team, specialized units that process scenes and track armed suspects. If a suspect is eventually identified and charged, Oregon law treats intentionally causing serious physical injury with a deadly weapon as Assault in the First Degree, a Class A felony carrying a mandatory minimum of 7.5 years under Measure 11. Simply discharging a firearm at a person within city limits can also bring a separate Unlawful Use of a Weapon charge, a Class C felony punishable by up to five years.
As Jahan waits to learn whether the bullet inside him can come out, he also has access to the Oregon Crime Victims' Compensation Program, which offers up to $20,000 for crime-related medical and mental health treatment even when no suspect has been arrested. Applicants must file within 12 months and report the crime to law enforcement to qualify.
