The Oregonian | By Noelle Crombie | June 09, 2021
The man killed during a foot chase by a Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy early Monday had cycled in and out of prison and jail for nearly two decades, a bleak pattern his mother said was forged by childhood trauma.
Cathy Pappas of Fossil said her son, Jeremiah L. Wright, was 11 when he discovered his 16-year-old brother had taken his own life in the next bedroom. A few years later, a close friend disappeared and Wright found the young man’s body in a canyon in Redmond, where he lived.
“My belief is he had extreme PTSD,” Pappas said Wednesday.
Wright, 44, was driving a stolen Ford Escape when he encountered the deputy about 2:10 a.m. Monday in Happy Valley, sheriff’s officials said. The car did not have front or rear plates and was stolen out of Nevada, they said.
The deputy tried to stop Wright, who fled first in the car and then by foot.
The deputy shot Wright on a sidewalk a short distance away and investigators recovered a 9mm Glock pistol near the man’s body, sheriff’s officials said.
The Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office on Wednesday identified the deputy as Casey Newton. He has been with the agency for eight years.
County authorities have not said how many times Wright was shot.
Michael Fuller, a Portland lawyer representing Wright’s wife Kayla Wright, on Wednesday demanded Clackamas County authorities disclose more information about what led to the shooting and reveal where Wright was shot and how many times and where precisely the gun was found in relation to Wright’s body.
“There is no evidence that I am aware of that there were any shots fired by Mr. Wright,” Fuller said.
He said the information released so far by authorities “suggests this killing might have been unlawful.”
Fuller said the family is asking for the incident to be investigated by outside investigators and for the Clackamas County DA’s Office to ask an outside prosecutor’s office to review the matter for potential criminal charges.
The DA’s office this week said the case would be presented to a grand jury as is the practice in the county in fatal police shooting investigations.
According to the Oregon Department of Corrections, Wright first entered the state prison system in 2000 for a weapons offense.
Over the next 18 years, Wright would be convicted another 18 times for offenses that included robbery, theft, criminal mischief, drug possession and drug dealing, eluding police and violating the terms of his post-prison supervision agreement.
His latest convictions were in 2017 and 2018 and involved dealing methamphetamine and heroin in Deschutes and Clackamas counties.
Wright’s most recent stint in prison ended last August. His mother, who said she was in regular contact with him, said her son seemed to struggle to make basic decisions.
She said her son, who was married and had a grown daughter, had been institutionalized from years in prison.
“He was just trying to cope,” she said.
She said she doesn’t know the circumstances of his encounter with the deputy on Monday.
“Maybe he thought he was going back to prison,” she said.
