Grand jury frees man accused of murder
Friday, April 18, 2008 1:31 PM PDT
PORTLAND (AP) — Less than a month ago David Lee Patterson turned himself into Texas authorities, admitting to killing a man in Portland nearly 17 years ago. Thursday a Multnomah County grand jury declined to file charges, believing his claim of self defense.
Patterson, 60, shot and killed Eric Lamon, 21, when Lamon kicked Patterson awake as he slept outside a funeral home and shouted racial slurs at him in May of 1991.
‘‘It’s like a ton off my shoulders,’’ Patterson said on the jail steps as he waited for a ride from a brother and sister-in-law he hadn’t seen in a decade. ‘‘Now I don’t have to worry.’’
Since that night his life was one of peaks of jobs and sobriety, canyons of alcohol and drug relapses.
He said it has taken this long to follow through on the Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous step program.
‘‘I always got to the step where you make amends, and couldn’t go forward,’’ Patterson said. ‘‘I never could get to that because I feared that no one would believe me.’’
The Alabama native ran away from home at 15 and joined the Army by 18.
He moved to Portland to be with his mother in 1984.
Cocaine had made him homeless by the night of the shooting.
Patterson said he was awakened by three white men swearing at him.
‘‘Before I knew it, I’m getting beaten up. I curled up to protect myself. One man jumped on top of me. They were saying, ‘How do you like this, nigger?’ So I thought, ‘They’re not going to stop.’ ’’
Patterson pulled a pistol from his bedroll and fired.
He stayed in Portland, driving a truck for Loaves & Fishes but relapsed and landed in a treatment facility.
Nine months after the shooting he wrote the first of three unsigned postcards to The Oregonian, admitting his crime.
‘‘It was bugging me and bugging me, and I wanted my story to get out,’’ he said.
