A 52-year-old Portland man is facing attempted murder and bias crime charges after police say he fired a shotgun at least twice at a passing driver in the city's Piedmont neighborhood on Saturday. No one was hurt, but officers say the suspect dropped his weapon only after being ordered to, and was in handcuffs within seven minutes of the first unit being dispatched.
Shots Fired in North Portland Neighborhood
Police identified the man as Marc W. Schaffer, a Portland resident, according to KATU. Officers responded at about 11:03 a.m. on Saturday to reports of a person with a gun in the 6700 block of North Commercial Avenue, the station reports. While officers were on their way, they received additional reports that the suspect had fired shots, and detectives later determined he had fired at least twice at a passing driver.
Officers confronted Schaffer, and the station's report notes he dropped the shotgun when ordered and was taken into custody within seven minutes of the first unit being dispatched. Police seized the shotgun as evidence. The quick turnaround meant the confrontation was over almost as soon as it began, even as the incident rattled a residential stretch of the neighborhood.
Bias Crime Charge Tied to Statements About Race
Schaffer was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center on charges of second-degree attempted murder, first-degree attempted assault, first-degree bias crime and second-degree criminal mischief, per the same account. Investigators are treating the shooting as a bias crime after Schaffer made statements connecting his actions to the race of a person inside the car, according to KPTV. Those statements, rather than the shooting alone, are what triggered the added charge, officers said.
The case remains under investigation. Police have asked anyone with information to contact the bureau's Enhanced Community Safety Team and reference case number 26-316621.
A Wider Pattern of Bias Reports in Oregon
The Piedmont shooting lands amid a broader, if uneven, statewide picture of bias reporting. Oregon's Bias Response Hotline logged 2,726 tips in 2024, a 7% drop from the 2,932 reports it received the year before, according to OPB. That marked the first decline since the hotline launched in 2020, when reports had risen every year prior. The Oregon Department of Justice cautioned that the dip could reflect underreporting rather than an actual drop in bias incidents, OPB noted.
Portland's own bias-crime data comes with similar caveats. The Portland Police Bureau's bias-crime dashboard tracks only incidents reported to that agency and specifically excludes crimes that go unreported or are reported to other jurisdictions, according to the bureau's open-data page. That gap makes it difficult to say how the Piedmont case compares to the city's broader bias-crime trends, even as detectives continue building their file on Schaffer.
