A Newport man says the five minutes he spent locked in a jail cell with a violent stranger left him with a traumatic brain injury — and he believes it happened because deputies wanted it to. Connor Brown filed a federal lawsuit in October accusing Newport police and Lincoln County Sheriff's deputies of civil-rights violations stemming from his March 2025 arrest and the jailhouse assault that followed.
Brown, a Newport resident, accuses the agencies of violating his civil rights through negligence and battery, according to KOIN. The lawsuit states Brown was arrested outside his high school in March 2025, when he was 19, after being accused of sexually abusing his then-girlfriend, a sophomore on the school swim team, per the complaint. Brown has said his ex-girlfriend was reportedly the daughter of a county employee with community relationships, including law-enforcement connections, according to the complaint.
A Cellmate With a Violent History
According to the lawsuit, deputies placed Brown in a cell with Thor Runion, a 35-year-old convicted felon with a lengthy criminal history who has a history of assaulting corrections deputies and other adults in custody, per the lawsuit. Brown alleges officers knew Runion was violent and intentionally timed his own arrest to coincide with the date Runion had agreed to turn himself in, the station's report notes.
The complaint alleges corrections staff told Runion that Brown was a “child molester or sex offender” and asked whether he would have problems with anyone in jail. Runion reportedly said he got along with everyone except child molesters and sex offenders, according to the complaint. Deputies then placed Runion in the cell with Brown and left the two unattended, the lawsuit claims.
Five Minutes Alone in a Cell
What happened next, according to the lawsuit, was a beating that left Brown with a traumatic brain injury, as OregonLive reported. The lawsuit alleges Runion repeatedly punched Brown's head, torso and back, and slammed him into the cell's walls, window and door. After about five minutes, Runion reportedly yelled to deputies to come “save this little f-cker,” at which point deputies separated the two men.
Brown has said he wished to press charges over the attack. He also alleges deputies failed to photograph his injuries and failed to preserve jail video footage during the investigation that followed.
Dismissed Charges, Guilty Pleas, and a Sentencing Dispute
The sexual-abuse charges against Brown were ultimately dismissed by authorities. He pleaded guilty to one count of harassment in November 2025, per the same account from OregonLive. Runion pleaded guilty to fourth-degree assault for the jail incident, but reports diverge on the length of his sentence: KOIN reported he was sentenced to a year in county jail, while OregonLive reported his sentence was 364 days in Lincoln County Jail with credit for time served.
Both Lincoln County and the City of Newport said they were unable to comment on the pending litigation, the outlet noted. Brown's federal lawsuit against both agencies remains before the courts, with the allegations so far confined to the claims laid out in his complaint.
