Portland police have arrested a suspect in the fatal stabbing that left a man bleeding out on a moving MAX train on Christmas Eve.
Edel Cruz-Aragon, 22, was booked Tuesday on charges of second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon. He was arrested after officers spotted him near Southwest Ninth Avenue and Oak Street; they detained him after he tried to walk away from them, the police bureau said.
Police allege Cruz-Aragon slashed 23-year-old Juan Francisco Orellana-Gavarrete during a fight on the Providence Park Max Station at about 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 24.
The wounded Orellana-Gavarrete boarded a westbound train and traveled one stop to the Goose Hollow Station, where paramedics and police soon arrived to help him.
Orellana-Gavarrete was pronounced dead that night at a nearby hospital.
Records show that Cruz-Aragon, whose listed address is a Portland homeless shelter, had a history of “unprovoked” behavior toward MAX passengers, though police have suggested the Christmas Eve stabbing wasn’t random.
On Feb. 4, Clackamas County Sheriff’s deputies pepper-sprayed Cruz-Aragon after he “cornered” a woman riding a Green Line train and began yelling at her without cause, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Cruz-Aragon had pursued the woman onto the Clackamas Town Center platform and grabbed her trash-collecting stick before police arrived, the affidavit says.
Later that month, Canby police arrested Cruz-Aragon again after the manager of Los Dos Agaves restaurant reported that someone was pounding on the restaurant’s locked door before the eatery opened for business, inflicting $900 in damage, and had punched out the taillight of an employee’s car, according to separate court records.
Cruz-Aragon was ordered to serve 1½ years of probation as part of a joint sentence that ended both cases Dec. 7.
He remains in custody without bail at Multnomah County’s downtown jail.
— Zane Sparling; zsparling@oregonian.com; 503-319-7083; @pdxzane
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