An enraged Jeremy Christian fumed about the men he stabbed aboard a crowded MAX train and blamed them for the fatal encounter while police held him in custody hours after the attack, a Portland homicide detective testified at Christian’s murder trial.
“You put your hands on me, you abridge my freedom of movement, you assault me, you die,” Christian told police on May 26, 2017, according to a statement read in court by Detective Michele Michaels. “I hope they died.”
Later that night, as Christian screamed inside a holding cell in the Multnomah County Justice Center and banged against the door, he told Michaels he had also wanted to stab an African American woman who exchanged words with him on the MAX a day before the killings, according to video showed to jurors.
The woman, Demetria Hester, had asked Christian to stop a racist harangue he had unleashed on train passengers near the Rose Quarter. Hester later blasted Christian with pepper spray and he threw a Gatorade bottle at her head.
“I would have stabbed her, if I could have seen,” Christian said, sitting in the cell. “(Expletive) who put their hands on me. That’s when it gets ugly.”
Michaels took the stand Tuesday and Wednesday in the second week of the trial.
Prosecutors rested their case Wednesday, after questioning a total of 40 witnesses in seven days. The trial won’t be held Thursday and Friday because Christian’s defense lawyers hadn’t prepared to start their case this week. The judge noted that some defense witnesses are scheduled to fly into Portland by Monday, when the defense will start.
During Michaels’ testimony, prosecutors had her show the jurors the folding knife that Christian is accused of plunging into the neck of Micah Fletcher, then 21, Taliesin Namkai-Meche, 23, and Ricky Best, 53.
Fletcher survived. Namkai-Meche was declared dead later at a hospital. Best died on the train after it pulled into the Hollywood Transit Center.
In addition to two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder, Christian is charged with the hate crime of second-degree intimidation for allegedly targeting Hester the night before and two teenage girls in the moments leading up to the stabbings as witnesses said he launched into a racist and xenophobic rant. One of those teens is African American and the other immigrated from Somalia and was wearing a hijab.
Michaels read Christian’s response to her when she asked him what led up to the stabbings.
“There’s no way I can explain what happened,” he said. “Except both of those people would be alive if they’d kept their hands to themselves. Or got off the train, or allowed me to have my free speech.
“It’s only because they decided to get violent with me that they signed their own death warrant, and I couldn’t feel one bit sorry or remorseful about that.”
A 20-year veteran of the Portland Police Bureau, Michaels served as one of the lead homicide investigators in the case.
Christian laughed and shook his head in apparent disagreement as Michaels testified, just as he has done during the testimony of other witnesses on past days. Prosecutor Don Rees asked the judge to admonish Christian and tell him to stop.
“She’s lying,” Christian blurted out.
The judge said some of the gesturing happened while Christian was talking to his attorneys, as he is allowed to do. But the judge told Christian that he otherwise must remain quiet.
As Michaels’ testimony continued, prosecutors played video for jurors of the entire train ride -- a compilation of cellphone and TriMet videos woven together. The first footage shows Best stepping aboard near Portland State University. The footage ends more than 30 minutes later, after the stabbings as Christian stormed off the train and walked across an Interstate 84 pedestrian overpass.
Michaels, who analyzed all the video from that day, said about five minutes before Christian started stabbing, Christian looked toward the two teenage girls and made “a slicing motion across his neck.” Michaels said some witnesses told her that Christian had been talking about decapitating people during his tirade.
When questioned by defense attorney Dean Smith, Michaels confirmed that Christian spent 31 seconds looking at the girls. Surveillance video shows his tirade spanned six minutes or more. Defense attorneys contend that Christian’s rant wasn’t directed specifically at the girls and that he wasn’t trying to intimidate them because of race or national origin.
But the prosecution contends he was.
“Is 31 seconds long enough for someone to intimidate another person?” asked Rees, the prosecutor.
“Yes,” Michaels said.
Michaels also said it was apparent from the video that Namkai-Meche and Best didn’t touch Christian at any point before he stabbed them.
Michaels said Namkai-Meche was looking down at his phone -- which he had picked up after Christian threw it to the floor seconds earlier -- as Fletcher was stabbed. Namkai-Meche looked up just as Christian stabbed him in the neck, face and hand. Michaels said the entire time, Namkai-Meche was still clutching a food container in one hand and his phone in the other.
“It indicated to me that Mr. Namkai-Meche never did anything in being able to defend himself,” Michaels said. “... There wasn’t anything he did to rectify the situation. He was defenseless.”
When the prosecution showed jurors a video still frame of Christian stabbing Best, Michaels noted that Best was looking down, not at Christian. Both of his arms were pointed in the direction of the train floor. His hands aren’t on Christian.
Rees asked if Michaels could tell what Best was doing when Christian attacked him. Michaels said Best was simply standing still with one hand griping a bar attached to the MAX train. His left hand was down by his side.
Prosecutors offered jurors a window into Christian’s thoughts in January 2018, about seven months after the attack. Over defense attorneys’ objections, prosecutors played for the jury a recorded jail phone call between Christian and a friend.
In the conversation, Christian said he “got in an altercation" with Namkai-Meche because “he stuck a phone right in my face.” Christian blamed Namkai-Meche’s aunt, because she had been on the phone with her nephew a moment before and suggested he record Christian ranting because it might be a hate crime in progress.
“Basically, his aunt sent him to his death," Christian said. He described Namkai-Meche’s family as a group of social justice warriors.
Christian also mocked Fletcher in the recording, calling him a “wannabe social justice warrior who was having an autistic tantrum” when he intervened right after Christian threw Namkai-Meche’s phone to the train floor.
Christian said Fletcher “decided to bully me. That didn’t work out too well for him."
Also Wednesday, prosecutors called the oldest son of Ricky Best and a sister of Taliesin Namkai-Meche. They eached shared basic biographical information about their loved ones -- a move defense attorneys objected to, arguing it would stir emotion. The judge, however, allowed the limited line of questioning.
Best’s son, Erik Best, said he has two younger brothers and a younger sister. He said he was 19 when his father died. His father had served in the Army before working for Portland’s Bureau of Development Services, a job he commuted to on MAX.
Prosecutors showed jurors a photo of Ricky Best in his Army fatigues, helmet strapped to his chin.
Vajra Alaya-Maitreya, Namkai-Meche’s older sister, testified that her brother was the second youngest in a family of nine children. She said her brother, a 2016 Reed College graduate, worked on environmental projects for the consulting firm Cadmus Group in downtown Portland. He commuted by MAX or bus because of his concern for the environment, she said.
Alaya-Maitreya teared up and her voice cracked as prosecutors showed jurors a photo of her brother, beaming in a knit cap with ear flaps and taken in his last year of life.
-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh and Aimee Green
Email at skavanaugh@oregonian.com. Phone at 503-294-7632. Follow on Twitter @shanedkavanaugh
Email at agreen@oregonian.com. Follow on Twitter @o_aimee
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