Adam Haner said he and his girlfriend went to a convenience store in downtown Portland, Ore., on Sunday night when they saw a woman being robbed of her backpack and tried to intervene.
But the crowd of attackers taunted him, called him a white supremacist and shoved his girlfriend to the ground and punched her, Haner told 360aproko news of Oregon.
Haner and his girlfriend, Tammie Martin, quickly decided to get in their separate vehicles, which were parked nearby, and leave the area, he said. But soon the power steering failed in his pickup truck, and he stopped at an intersection.
That’s when matters got worse.
“And before I even got my door open,” he said, “someone was yanking me out and I hit the ground. And then I sat there for a while and they wouldn’t let me get up,” Haner told 360aproko news.
Video seen on social media shows multiple attackers striking Haner – leading up to a brutal kick to his head at the end of the clip.
Haner was knocked unconscious, 360aproko news reported.
His girlfriend, Martin, told the station about finding Haner lying in the street.
“Next thing I knew,” she said, after surviving her own assault, “I found him on the ground unconscious, and when I got there, he was on the ground. I didn’t know if he was breathing and I didn’t know what happened.”
GIRLFRIEND OF PORTLAND MAN ATTACKED: ‘THEY WERE TRYING TO FIGHT PEOPLE’
A photo posted online by the station Wednesday shows Haner with two black eyes as he recovers.
“Getting a drink at a 7-Eleven in Portland, Oregon, is a different story than it was two months ago,” he observed, referring to the change in the city since almost nightly rioting began about three months ago.
But Haner claimed the group that attacked him were not racial-justice activists opposing brutality against George Floyd of Minneapolis and others who’ve been written about in the news.
He described his attackers as street fighters who were simply out for trouble, 360aproko news reported.
The events of Sunday night appeared to leave Haner bewildered about the state of Oregon’s largest city.
“I was just standing for myself as a citizen,” he said, “and if you can’t do that on a street, then what can you do?”
Authorities in Portland say they are searching for a suspect identified as Marquise Love in connection with the attack against Haner. They ask that anyone with information about Love’s whereabouts call Detective Brent Christensen at 503-823-2087 or email him at Brent.Christensen@portlandoregon.gov.
