A woman in Portland, Oregon says an accused killer violently ranted the night before his alleged attack.
Jeremy Joseph Christian, 35, is being held at Multnomah County Jail in connection to the murders of 23-year-old Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche and 53-year-old Ricky Best, and the attempted killing of 21-year-old Micah David-Cole Fletcher. Authorities said he yelled at two teen girls on a train. Reportedly, he thought they were Muslim, and things took a violent turn after he was stood up to.
Well, the night before, he apparently went on a rant about being pepper-sprayed. A woman who spoke to KOIN told the outlet she was riding home Thursday on a Portland train when she said a man was yelling into his cellphone.
“He was pretty upset, squinting his eyes, venting to his friend on the phone about some girl that just pepper-sprayed him,” said the woman, only identified as KK. “He was complaining about the city, complaining about Muslims, Christians, and it just got very violent very quick.”
KK claimed the rant went on for about 10 minutes before she started recording. She’d never seen anything like it.
“He was threatening to hurt somebody,” she said. Other train riders moved after he allegedly talked about wanting to stab someone, and he motioned as if to take something out of his pocket. She soon moved to the other side of the train, after which he allegedly went on and on about Christians, Muslims, and “f–king Jews.”
She said nothing was done to take this man from the train even though the driver was apparently notified.
KK said she heard about the deadly attack on Friday, and wondered if the suspect was the same man she’d seen the night before. Police confirmed to KOIN that yes, it was Christian, but they didn’t elaborate. Commuter rail dispatch audio obtained by the outlet shows that train operators knew about an alleged incident in which a female passenger pepper-sprayed a man who hit her with a coke bottle.
[Screengrab via KK]
