Killings of Aaron Danielson and Michael Reinoehl
[3][4] On September 3, 2020, Danielson's suspected killer, Michael Reinoehl, an American anti-fascist[3][5] activist[6][7] was shot and killed by a federally led fugitive task force near Lacey, Washington.[18][19] However, some witnesses stated that officers opened fire without warning,[20] and a review by The New York Times also disputed this,[19] concluding that local investigators had discounted key pieces of evidence.[30] According to Portland Tribune articles published after his death, Danielson spent much of his free time with a racially mixed group of people in his neighborhood, and black friends spoke up for him.[29] Danielson's parents said he blamed antifa for destruction in Portland and was convinced that the group was funded by someone who wanted America destroyed by civil war.[11][36] When Danielson and Pappas crossed the road, Reinoehl, joined by an associate, followed them while "reaching toward the pocket or pouch on his waistband", with the shooting occurring moments later.[34][38] According to the police affidavit, Danielson had a loaded Glock pistol in a holster and was holding a can of bear spray and an expandable metal baton.[35] At a memorial held in a park in Vancouver, Washington, Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson urged mourners not to seek vengeance, saying: "I know that Jay would not want that."[41] Danielson's father, speaking to a reporter at home in Spokane County, expressed a wish for Democrats to "get together with the Republican side and put a stop to this violence."[8] Reinoehl's social media posts, which had previously been about scenes of snowboarding, nature and his children, focused almost exclusively on the protests in Portland from May 30 onward.[42][46] On August 7, according to police investigators, Reinoehl sent a text message to his teenage son saying, "Sell me the gun for a quarter pound of weed and $100 I'm getting tired of this shit I need a piece now.The next night, Aug. 30, police again responded to the house after the other tenants reported it being shot at sometime before 1 p.m."[50] In a June 2020 Instagram post that was characterized by The New York Times as "laced with violent messages", Reinoehl wrote that he was "100% ANTIFA all the way!"[10][53][54] Reinoehl told Vice that he had not turned himself in after the shooting of Danielson because he feared that police were collaborating with right-wing protesters and that he might be killed in custody.[8][9] A seven-month inquiry into his death determined "Reinoehl fired first," "that he failed to comply with orders to surrender and was reaching for a gun in his possession when he was shot.[8] Lieutenant Ray Brady of the Sheriff's Department in Thurston County stated that four officers fired at Reinoehl outside an apartment after he drew a gun.[19] In May 2022 Vice News reported on an extensive collection of documents it was able to review related to the shooting and subsequent investigation, some of which had been redacted, most of which came from the Thurston County sheriff's office.The accounts of law enforcement personnel involved were baffling and at times inconsistent, not always squaring on questions as basic as whether Reinoehl was carrying a rifle or had shot at them.A former combat medic for the U.S. Army who witnessed the killing—and tried to keep children, including his own son, from being shot as police sprayed dozens of bullets—provided an account that countered official narratives, but the lead investigator in the case didn't speak to him for a month and a half after the shooting.According to Vice, the information in the documents about the vehicle Reinoehl was in, what weapons he had, and who he was traveling with was detailed and accurate enough to support an inference that law enforcement had an informant close to Reinoehl.[66] The task force that prepared to arrest Reinoehl was hampered in communicating since their radios were not working properly as they had taken them outside the jurisdiction of the local police department that usually used them.[66] The shell casing seemed from the documents to have been at the center of an evidence tampering investigation conducted by an unnamed outside agency due to conflict of interest issues.Documents related to this were more intensely redacted than the other ones in the file, and indicate that the shell casing's presence was first reported in February 2021, when someone informed the investigators they had it and mailed it somewhere for a detective to pick up.[66] Joe Biden, the Democratic Party's 2020 presidential candidate, released a statement on August 30, the day after the shooting, saying: "The deadly violence we saw overnight in Portland is unacceptable."[67] Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at the California State University, San Bernardino, commented to Voice of America in an article published on September 1, when investigations were still ongoing, that if Reinoehl was implicated it would mark the first case in recent history of an antifa supporter being charged with homicide.[5] Commenting in the Orange County Register on September 7, Levin said the incident was the "first known killing by an antifa supporter", describing it as "an outlier but also a bellwether.[...] You have a perfect storm in this country with a polarized population, a presidential election, a global pandemic that is frustrating and devastating people, and disinformation and conspiracy theories spreading on social media.[69] Shortly before Reinoehl's death was announced on September 3, President Donald Trump tweeted asking why Portland police had not arrested Danielson's "cold blooded killer", adding that "[e]verybody knows who this thug is."[70] In a Facebook Live video broadcast on September 13, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Public Affairs Michael Caputo described the killing of Danielson as "a drill" for future political violence.