Neighbors in Northwest Portland are reeling after a housed man accosted, pepper sprayed, then stabbed two homeless residents the morning of Aug. 27, according to court documents. Both of the people stabbed are expected to survive.
Witnesses told police the man approached homeless residents who were moving their tents, yelling at them and pepper spraying them. He left briefly, witnesses said, before returning moments later with a knife.
The incident, described as “random” by one witness, follows a pattern of violent incidents in Oregon — the state with the highest number of violent attacks against homeless residents in the nation.
Portland Police Bureau said officers responded to reports of a disturbance at Northwest 18th and Johnson around 9 a.m. Aug 27. When they arrived, they found two people had been stabbed. The suspect, 38-year-old Victor Palmer-Regen, fled to his nearby home.
Palmer-Regen did not comply with officers’ requests to come out of the house, and PPB called in the Special Emergency Reaction Team and Crisis Negotiation Team, shutting off 18th Avenue for hours.
Katie O’Brien, Rose Haven executive director, said the attack highlights how vulnerable homeless people are to violence, adding that incidents don’t often happen in the light of day.
“It just reminds us vividly how dangerous it is for people who live outside, and especially women,” she said.
Rose Haven, a daytime service provider for women, children and gender-diverse people, is less than a block from Palmer-Regen’s home.
A sworn affidavit from Deputy District Attorney Austin Buhl said two witnesses saw Palmer-Regen pepper spray one of the victims, who said he was helping a friend move a tent, leading to a fight. The witnesses were employees of Rapid Response Bio-Clean, the company contracted by the city to conduct sweeps of homeless encampments. Palmer-Regen allegedly kicked the man and put him in a chokehold during the attack. Palmer-Regen had been walking his dog, and after the fight he briefly returned to his home roughly two blocks away, according to surveillance footage shared with police.
Moments later, Palmer-Regen returned without the dog to where homeless residents were moving their tents, holding a kitchen knife the affidavit says was 6 or 7 inches long.
Palmer-Regen’s partner, Hugo Flores, submitted a formal complaint to the Independent Police Review Sept. 2. Flores said in the complaint that Palmer-Regen was experiencing “a severe mental health crisis” that day, yet it is unclear if he was in crisis before or after the altercation with homeless Portlanders. Flores filed the complaint against PPB “for their gross negligence, dishonesty, and direct actions that led to the loss of my dog,” according to the complaint obtained by Street Roots.
Flores’ complaint largely focused on the claim that PPB took the dog and gave it to a family member with a history of animal abuse, despite Flores showing legal proof of ownership. The complaint also claims PPB “failed to appropriately handle a mental health crisis, and their negligence directly caused the loss of a beloved animal.”
A response from the Independent Police Review said an investigator is reviewing the allegations against the officer for potential violations.
Another victim told police she was inside her tent when she witnessed the altercation. She got out of her tent and attempted to deescalate the fight, putting her hands in the air between the two men, but Palmer-Regen cut her near her left wrist and right armpit, according to the affidavit.
Lorelei Coia, a neighbor living in a nearby apartment, told Street Roots she looked out her window when she heard a woman screaming on the sidewalk. There, she saw Palmer-Regen — who she and other neighbors refer to as “Vic” — a block away from where the incident occurred. She went downstairs from her apartment and heard the woman say Palmer-Regen had stabbed someone down the street. Coia is familiar with Palmer-Regen from previous interactions in the neighborhood — some good, others not.
“There’s been several people here that have had bad experiences with him,” Coia said. “You know, this isn’t the first time, but this was the worst time.”
Coia said police blocked off the street outside her apartment, and neighbors looked on as police tried to get Palmer-Regen to surrender.
PPB’s efforts to bring Palmer-Regen into custody lasted nearly five hours, as he remained in his home despite officers’ requests. Just before 2 p.m., PPB said he exited the home and was taken into custody without further incident.
“I saw him walking forward and then he turned around and he put his hands behind his back,” Coia said.
Court records show Palmer-Regen had multiple pending charges at the time of his arrest, including driving while intoxicated and multiple incidents of assault.
“He has a smart mouth, you know,” Coia said. “He treats people like shit, and some people put up with it, and some people don’t.”
Palmer-Regen was convicted as recently as July 18 for fourth-degree assault, and had a charge for failure to appear in court Aug. 25, just two days prior to the incident.
For the alleged stabbing on Aug. 27, Palmer-Regen faces two counts of second-degree assault, two counts of unlawful use of a weapon and one count of criminal mischief — all felonies. He also faces a misdemeanor charge for unlawful use of pepper spray. Palmer-Regen is being held without bail at the Multnomah County Detention Center, and his arraignment is scheduled for Sept. 8.
O’Brien said the incident highlights the importance of providing shelter for people so they have a safe place to be — something Mayor Keith Wilson is prioritizing despite neighbors’ pushback. She said it is important for the public to understand that the suspect was a housed person who enacted violence on unhoused people who have no other place to go to find safety — not the other way around.
“We have to have safe and affordable housing for people,” O’Brien said. “But at the most basic level, if they had been in a shelter, this would not have happened.”
Following a pattern
Incidents of violence against homeless residents are cause for concern nationwide, including in Oregon, according to a 2024 report by the National Coalition for the Homeless, or NCH. Between 1999 and 2022, the NCH documented nearly 2,000 incidents of violence against homeless residents, with 29% of them fatal attacks.
From 2020-2022, the NCH documented 97 attacks on homeless residents in 24 states, with Oregon alone accounting for 15.5% of the attacks. Of the 47 fatal acts of violence, nearly half occurred in two states — California (19.1%) and Oregon (29.8%).
By gender, the perpetrators of the recorded non-lethal attacks (80.7%) were male, while 87.5% of those ending in fatality were male, according to the report. Since 1999, 95% of known perpetrators of violence against homeless people have been males under the age of 40.
The NCH report said cities’ efforts to criminalize homelessness — now-cemented by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case Grants Pass v. Johnson — opens the door to increased violence due to villainization and forced isolation of homeless people.
“We believe there’s a direct link between these growing criminalization efforts and the increase in violence and vitriol toward people experiencing homelessness,” the report said. “Elected officials must recognize the impact of the decision to criminalize homelessness in their communities.”
The incident is unlikely to be charged as a bias crime, because being homeless is not a protected class.
In Oregon, a person can be charged with a bias crime if they cause physical injury to another person because of their perception of another person’s race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or national origin. Those are protected classes under state and federal civil rights laws, meaning they are protected by law from discrimination.
While being homeless is not a protected class, people in groups designated as protected classes are overrepresented in homelessness statistics. With homeless people being more likely to be victims of crimes than perpetrators of crimes, people in protected classes are at even greater risk when homeless.
People of color, particularly Black, African American, or African and American Indian, Alaska Native and Indigenous populations are considerably overrepresented among individuals experiencing homelessness — accounting for 69% of individuals experiencing homelessness — according to the 2024 Point in Time, or PIT Count.
And people self-identifying as gender questioning had the highest unsheltered rate, at 81%.
People with disabilities also make up a disproportionate share of homelessness statistics, with 30% of those counted in 2024 being chronically homeless. Chronic homelessness is defined as an individual with a disability who has been continuously experiencing homelessness for over a year, or experiencing at least four episodes of homelessness within three years where the combined total is at least 12 months.
“Compared to 2020 — just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — experiences of chronic homelessness have increased by 38%,” according to the PIT Count.
That demographic is entering into homelessness at a rapid rate, including in Oregon, where the number of people experiencing chronic homelessness increased by 172.4% from 2007 to 2024 — the third highest relative increase by state.
O’Brien, from Rose Haven, said the Aug. 27 incident felt like a scene from a movie as she and other staff watched the standoff from their office windows.
O’Brien said some guests were traumatized by the situation, while others were not — in a way she said seemed unnatural and likely due to frequent exposure to trauma.
“They’re just used to living outside, and they’re used to living in these high conflict, high stress situations at all times,” O’Brien said. “It was kind of this whole spectrum of experiences people were having.”
Asked if homeless people should be included as a protected class, O’Brien said the incident “feels like a hate crime,” highlighting that the public has become frustrated with a group of people who are often wrongly stereotyped as dangerous.
“It’s not specific to a person,” O’Brien said. “It is specific to a frustration, around a category of people that exist, that people are frustrated with. And they’re frustrated with the situation, not the actual person, but the person is going to receive that. So, how do we protect people from receiving that?”
O’Brien said it is a long journey to providing enough housing and shelter for everyone. In the meantime, media framing and neighbors’ anger at homeless Portlanders make things more dangerous for the city’s most vulnerable people.
“If we’re simply just fueling the fire, the result of that is, people feel emboldened and angry,” O’Brien said. “And that gets taken out on people who are living outside, just trying to survive.”
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
© 2025 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 40.
This article appears in September 3, 2025.