More than two years after two men were gunned down at a Columbia River boat launch in Northeast Portland, police still don't have a suspect description or a single arrest to show for it. On Tuesday, the Portland Police Bureau put out a renewed public appeal for information on the July 13, 2024 double homicide at the M. James Gleason Memorial Boat Ramp, asking anyone with knowledge of the case to reference case number 24-174823 when they call in.
The victims, 18-year-old Portland resident J'Meire Asher and 38-year-old Salem resident DeAngelo Augustus, both died of gunshot wounds after the shooting broke out at the boat ramp at 4325 NE Marine Drive just before 8 p.m., according to KPTV. Police have released no description of a suspect or suspects and have made no arrests in the nearly two and a half years since. Detectives are asking anyone with even a small piece of information to come forward, noting that minor details can still move a stalled case forward.
A Fading Tool for Anonymous Tips
The renewed appeal lands at an awkward moment for how tips get to police in Oregon. Crime Stoppers of Oregon, the 43-year-old nonprofit that historically offered cash rewards of up to $2,500 for anonymous tips in Portland homicides, announced the same day that it is shutting down its tip-reporting operations by the end of the month, according to KGW. The organization is instructing community members to submit future tips directly to law enforcement instead. For a case like this one, without an arrest or a suspect description more than two years in, that shift means the public's main incentive-driven reporting channel is disappearing right as investigators need it most.
For now, the bureau says tips can go to detectives by phone at 503-823-0479 or by email at [email protected]. Police made the same request when they first named Asher and Augustus as the victims in a July 2024 appeal, which Hoodline covered at the time. Two years later, that call for the public's help remains functionally unanswered.
A Deadly Stretch in Mid-July 2024
The shooting at the boat ramp did not happen in isolation. It was Portland's third homicide within a 24-hour span and the sixth homicide the city had recorded that July alone, pushing the city's total homicide count to 40 for the year at that point, per the same KGW account. Police response was intense: officers shut down NE Marine Drive in both directions between 33rd Avenue and 122nd Avenue, blocking nearly five miles of roadway along the Columbia River to secure the scene, as reported by East PDX News. That closure choked off an arterial corridor running adjacent to Portland International Airport for hours.
Initial responders included the Portland Police Bureau's Focused Intervention Team, a specialized unit established in January 2022 to respond to active shootings and interrupt retaliatory violence under civilian oversight, according to the bureau. The unit works alongside a community oversight group as part of its broader mandate to de-escalate gun violence in the city.
Not the First Bloodshed at This Boat Ramp
The Gleason boat ramp is a heavily used Columbia River access point that also houses an operational office for the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office River Patrol Unit, on property owned by regional government agency Metro, which operates the public park facility where the river patrol unit leases space. Despite that law enforcement presence, the site has seen deadly gun violence before. In August 2018, a fatal shooting in the boat ramp's eastern parking lot killed 47-year-old Andre Pennington, who died at a hospital shortly after being shot. That case eventually led to an 18-year manslaughter sentence for gunman Jamias Hart-Rasberry, handed down in January 2024, according to the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office.
If investigators do eventually identify and charge a suspect in the 2024 double homicide, Oregon law sets a steep bar for punishment. A conviction for second-degree murder under ORS 163.115 carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment with a minimum 25-year prison term before parole eligibility, under the state's Measure 11 sentencing scheme for major violent offenses.
A Broader Decline in Portland Homicides
The case's lack of resolution stands in some contrast to the city's overall trajectory on gun violence. Citywide homicides in Portland fell to 71 in 2024, an 8% drop from 2023 and a 30% decrease from the record 101 homicides logged in 2022, while overall non-suicide shootings dropped more than 20%, according to Axios. Portland had experienced a surge in gun violence between 2020 and 2022 before those multi-year declines took hold.
The boat ramp itself remains a functioning public facility, open daily from 4:30 a.m. to sunset and permitting overnight parking for boaters for up to four days, though day-use visitors are barred from camping or staying overnight in vehicles there, according to the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership. It connects to the Columbia River and the 40-Mile Loop Trail, making it a regular stop for boaters and recreational users even as the 2024 killings there remain unsolved. For now, anyone with information is asked to reach detectives directly, since the cash-incentive tip line that once supplemented that process will be gone within weeks.
