Portland 911 Call Goes Unanswered for 90 Minutes as Child is Held at Knifepoint

Dad, Henry Kirim had only just walked out of his Southeast Portland apartment to check his car for a missing bank card when a strange man rushed into his ground-floor unit, closed the door and locked it. The frightening part is that Kirim’s 12-year-old son remained inside.

Kirim searched for his house key, thankful he had it on the same ring as his car key, and raced to open his apartment door.

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“I was so scared,” he said.

Dad’s interview

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What happened from the moment he found the key, and the next 10 minutes were very much a blur. Kirim fumbled for his key and ran back to the apartment to unlock the door. Upon entering, the man grabbed a large knife from the kitchen counter. The boy was standing behind the stranger crying. With the knife in one hand, the stranger then picked up the 20lb dumbell with the other hand and started to charge Kirim.

This moment gave the child an opening to run past his dad out the front door. Kirim backed out of the apartment and began knocking the doors of neighbors begging them to call 911. For 15 more minutes the stranger remained in the 2-bedroom apartment ransacking the place.

12:41pm First emergency call from a neighbor reporting there was an intruder in the house with a knife. Boy still inside.

12:49pm Dispatch noted “no units avail” which meant officers weren’t able to respond.

The stranger ran out of the apartment, breaking a screen door. The neighbors chased him down and caught him a block away trying to break into another home. 911 calls began pouring in.

Some neighbors told 911 the man flailing his arms, dumping out cigarettes in a stairwell of the apartment complex.

One woman said he peered through her door’s peephole “for two minutes straight.”

Before he was cornered, he tried to knock on the front door of an adjacent home and neighbors who chased after him screamed, “Don’t open the door! Don’t open the door!”

1:22pm another neighbor alerted dispatch saying that the suspect still had a knife, had tried to fight the neighbors but now was just sitting on the ground.

Neighbors circled the stranger, telling him he couldn’t leave.

1:27pm an dispatch officer reported: “Trying to clear up units to go.”

1:55pm a 911 caller tells dispatcher that the stranger “is very high” and didn’t understand what was happening. The caller relayed that the residents were “taking it into their own hands since police won’t show.”

2:10pm a North Precinct sergeant reported to dispatch that police were “working on sending someone.”

Kitim told the local news that, “Every neighbor here was expecting the police to come. We called about a million times, and the police would not show up.”

Police agreed that the delay was unacceptable.

“This is not the service our community expects, nor is it what we want to provide,” said Deputy Police Chief Chris Davis.

In the last 8 weeks: 49 officers have retired and nine others have resigned. Other officers are injured or on vacation, further reducing staff. During the time of this emergency police were responding at the same time to a tactical call in East Precinct that required a special team and also were monitoring what turned out to be a violent clash between dueling protesters in downtown as well as preparing for another nightly protest.

While a mostly white group of people called Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA create chaos that strains the first responder system call for defunding police; An actual black man and his son and their entire neighborhood had to do without help because of the criminal acts. The rioting, chaos and call for defunding the police have cause many law enforcement to retire or leave the department. This story is one of hundreds of lives in the area who no longer have access to protection because of a political campaign. After reading this story do you believe Black Lives Matter to BLM?