Kyle Williamson
Williamson, an apparel industry professional, is a Portland native who recently moved to California.
I finally gave up on Portland last year. I spent nearly my whole life there – born at Good Samaritan Medical Center and grew up in Northeast Portland. I was first an Oregon Episcopal School Aardvark, then an Oregon Duck and later worked at Nike for almost 15 years.
One of my favorite memories was from sixth grade, when I attended St. Thomas More Catholic School. The school is at the top of the West Hills, and every morning my mom dropped me and my bike off at the school entrance. At the end of the school day, I’d fly down Vista on my Schwinn, passing the waterfront and crossing the Broadway bridge, until I reached our 100-year-old craftsman in Irvington. I’d be breathless, excited and feeling the deepest gratitude for Portland. I love my city. Always will.
And that’s why it broke my heart to move away. Last summer, my wife and I, along with our two young kids, moved to Santa Barbara, California. We needed to escape Portland.
My mom, Jean Gerich, was killed last January. She was the sixth person to be violently murdered in what would turn out to be a record-setting year of homicides in Portland. She was hit by a madman on a hit-and-run rampage, we learned from police and witnesses. After the first hit, she vulnerably sat there, while he made a U-turn, swerved and hit her a second time, witnesses said. She became trapped under his vehicle and was dragged a block before being dislodged at the next corner.
When I got the phone call from police that day, I rushed to OHSU Hospital to find her barely holding on to life. Her face was mangled, bloody and covered in feathers from her insulated jacket that exploded from the impact. When she saw me, she smiled and said, “Hi Kyky - I’m so glad you are here.” I cried uncontrollably, and we made goodbye phone calls to loved ones. Then we ramped up the morphine as she gasped for her final breaths. The drive home was one of the loneliness drives of my life.
Only later in my grief would I connect her murder to a larger context of a city in peril, beset by a pandemic that compounded struggles for those with mental health issues; a depleted police force ill-equipped to protect Portlanders; and city leadership with utopian agendas. My mom’s story unfortunately illustrates some of these issues. And her murder could have been prevented. The man charged with her death had more than one run-in with the police leading up to this tragic day – the last one only a few days before this deadly rampage.
Our city is dying. It’s Detroit in the 70′s; once glorious, now doomed. Walking around downtown you see trash-lined streets, homeless camps and violent run-ins between strangers. You see city leaders unable to address complex issues because of overly idealistic solutions of reinventing systems when our urgent problems need practical action now. And you see many Portlanders who have loved this city and helped foster its spirit of pride and community – people like my mom – now choosing to leave.
I don’t know what will become of Portland, but I cannot stay to watch.
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January 26, 2022 at 09:30PM
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Opinion: A hit-and-run rampage reveals a city in crisis - OregonLive
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