How an alleged burglary in Portland set off a police search that killed a suspect

A Portland man in a stolen Kia who died after colliding with a police cruiser last fall was flying down Southeast Holgate Boulevard at more than twice the posted speed limit when he T-boned a police SUV that crossed into the intersection in front of him without stopping at a stop sign, police reports say.

This detail and others emerged in 137 pages of police records released to The Oregonian/OregonLive in response to questions about the Oct. 6 crash, the first fatal collision involving a Portland officer since 2018.

Six months after the crash, it’s unclear if Officer Andrew Young, who was behind the wheel of the police SUV, will face any discipline for clocking 66 mph in a 20 mph zone on Southeast 111th Avenue, slamming on his brakes and blowing through the stop sign at the intersection with Holgate while still traveling 31 mph. Young had a police trainee in his passenger seat when his 6,000-pound Ford Explorer collided with the 3,000-pound Kia, slid across Holgate, crashed through the fence of a Cape Cod-style home and struck its gas meter.

Gilberth Alberto Colli-Garma, who had methamphetamine and fentanyl in his system, according to blood tests, died from his injuries after multiple surgeries, police announced on Nov. 25. His passenger, 27-year-old Regina Lopez-Avila, survived. Neither was charged with a crime for their alleged role in a suspected robbery that precipitated the search for the Kia.

Police, for their part, are not answering questions about the actions of officers and whether the crash was preventable.

“This is under internal review,” Police Bureau spokesperson Mike Benner wrote in an email. “It would be irresponsible for PPB to comment any further at this point.”

SUSPECTED ROBBERY

Events unfolded around 3 a.m. when police got a report that a man and a woman were trying to rob a used bookstore in the Centennial neighborhood of Southeast Portland.

An officer who responded to Bearly Read Books near Southeast 164th Avenue and Powell Boulevard saw a white Kia he believed was connected to the suspects headed west on Powell. The vehicle had been reported stolen from a Portland home the day before.

Officer Jerry Ables then spotted the sedan and followed it south on Southeast 136th Avenue, he wrote in a police report. After the Kia rolled through a stop sign and headed east on Holgate, Ables turned on his lights to pull over the driver, later identified as 36-year-old Colli-Garma.

The Kia didn’t stop, Ables wrote, but turned around and started driving west on Holgate.

In 2017, the Police Bureau changed its policy to restrict officers from chasing suspects. The goal was to protect the public from high-speed pursuits. Officers were supposed to limit chases to times when a suspect fleeing in a car had allegedly committed a felony against a person — or when a driver was already putting people in serious danger with their recklessness behind the wheel, police said.

The safety risks were evident. In 2018, a man eluding police in a Toyota Celica died after an officer chased him into oncoming traffic on Interstate 84 and he crashed head-on into a taxi, the Portland Tribune reported. In 2021, a Milwaukie man died after a theft suspect Clackamas County deputies were chasing struck the man’s car. And last June, a bystander died after a Gresham officer chased a suspect in a Buick Regal into Portland.

This January, the Police Bureau relaxed its rules around police chases on the assertion that suspects had realized they could flee and Portland officers wouldn’t speed after them. Now Portland police are cautioned to chase suspects only when the benefits to the public clearly outweigh the risks.

In any case, police insisted in their reports on the 2023 crash that no officer chased the burglary suspects. “At no time did any officer pursue this eluding vehicle,” wrote Sgt. Richard Steinbronn in his report.

Meanwhile, other officers tried to get ahead of the burglary suspects.

Officer Andriy Cherevan parked farther down Holgate, near 112th Avenue, to try to deploy a spike strip to deflate the Kia’s tires.

‘I FIRMLY APPLIED MY BRAKES’

As Cherevan walked to the intersection, he saw the Kia speed down Holgate — computer data from the car later showed the Kia was going 79 mph in a 30 mph zone — then swerve into oncoming traffic to pass a car stopped at the red light, careening toward 111th Avenue. Cherevan launched his spike strips at the Kia, but “couldn’t tell if it was successful or not,” he wrote.

In that moment, Officer Young’s police SUV slid through the intersection of Holgate and 111th, colliding with the Kia.

Young, a six-year veteran of the bureau who was on patrol with a 25-year-old trainee named Jacob Chen, had heard over the radio that the Kia had been headed westbound on Holgate. He was also trying to get ahead of the Kia to throw spike strips in front of the car, he wrote. As he approached Holgate, he turned off his SUV’s overhead lights so as to not alert Colli-Garma to his presence, he wrote.

Computer data from the SUV shows Young was driving over 65 mph as he approached the intersection. He hit the brakes before the stop sign but didn’t fully stop. His Ford Explorer was still traveling 31 mph as it crossed the intersection.

“I firmly applied my brakes and was surprised the patrol car did not stop as quickly as intended,” Young wrote in a police report. “We moved through the stop sign into the Holgate lanes of travel.”

Colli-Garma also touched his brakes, according to the crash analysis, but he was still traveling 72 mph when he struck Young’s cruiser.

Cherevan was retrieving his spike strips from the road when he heard the crash, he wrote. He looked right to see the Kia launch into the air, he wrote, and the police cruiser travel north toward the house.

Officers who responded to the crash found Colli-Garma unconscious and “completely folded into the dash” of the Kia. Firefighters had to tear off the door to get him out of the car. Neither he nor his passenger were wearing seatbelts, police said.

Chen and Young were belted into their cruiser “dazed and confused” when their colleagues made it to the scene, reports said.

Paramedics drove all four crash victims to hospitals. An officer riding with Colli-Garma in the ambulance said he woke up at one point and began to speak in Spanish, but she couldn’t understand what he said.

Police records of the crash released to The Oregonian/OregonLive don’t include any interviews with Chen, the trainee in the passenger seat of the demolished cruiser. Nor was there any documentation of interviews with the Kia passenger, Lopez-Avila, who was taken to the hospital with serious injuries but survived, or with Colli-Garma. Both Lopez-Avila and Colli-Garma were too injured to talk to immediately, records show.

Lopez-Avila, whose arm was “bent almost completely backward” with bone protruding from the skin, did not return calls from The Oregonian/OregonLive seeking comment on the crash. The Oregonian/OregonLive could not locate a relative of Colli-Garma.

Both Young and Chen are still on the force, Benner said. The agency is still “in the review process” to determine whether Young should face any discipline related to the crash, he said.

SHATTERED SECURITY

On Monday, the homeowners at the intersection of Southeast Holgate Boulevard and 111th Avenue were in their yard still repairing damage from the crash. Their sense of security might not be as easy to fix, they said. They’re thinking of selling.

“The whole thing has just been pretty jarring and traumatic,” said homeowner Dean Price. “Every time I hear sirens — which is often in this area — I’m always looking to see how close they are.”

Police reports show officers were worried about a gas leak after the SUV struck the meter. Cynthia Andrade-Torres, Price’s partner, said the pair was supposed to have had furnace maintenance that morning and had turned off the gas. Police left a gaping hole and glass in the side yard, where their dog, Gus, plays.

Homeowners insurance has covered a large portion of the damage to the home and fence, which Andrade-Torres estimated at about $25,000. But it didn’t cover repairs to the yard, Price and Andrade-Torres said. They’ve paid for nearly $1,000 of landscaping materials, and said that the first claim they filed for damages with the city was denied. They’ve collected receipts and plan to file again.

When they asked for a copy of the 137-page police report on the crash, a representative of the Police Bureau said the couple would have to pay for it.

“The entire way they handled the situation, I think, could have been better,” Andrade-Torres said.

A TOOL BELT AND BOX OF STICKERS

Shellie Collison, the owner of Bearly Read Books, said police left her in the lurch too. She heard from the news that the driver of the Kia died. She never heard anything else about the woman, or whether she’d been charged in the alleged burglary that set off the events of Oct. 6. A spokesperson for the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday that police never formally referred the burglary or the crash to prosecutors for review.

Collison feels bad for the man who died, she said. She’s still upset that a pair of thieves broke into her store, messed up her door and frightened her cat, but she doesn’t harbor any ill will. She hopes the young woman has learned from what happened, she said.

The two people who broke in overturned drawers and scattered papers and made a huge mess, Collison said, so it’s been difficult to inventory what they might have taken. Her best guess right now is that they took a tool belt and a box of stickers.

“To do all that, just to get nothing – I couldn’t understand,” she said.

— Sami Edge covers higher education and politics for The Oregonian. You can reach her at sedge@oregonian.com or (503) 260-3430.

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