A 63-year-old man who police say shot dozens of bullets at them and forced frightened neighbors to cower in their mobile homes for more than an hour was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison.
Timothy James Bucher nearly struck a few Portland officers on May 24, 2016, when he opened fire with an assault rifle from his mobile home, prosecutors say. Bullets ricocheted off the ground near officers and struck their armored vehicles as they took cover.
Prosecutor David Hannon commended police for risking their lives to move the vehicles next to Bucher’s home to shield residents stuck inside their own mobile homes. Remarkably, no one was injured — including Bucher, who went on the rampage because he said he wanted police to kill him, Hannon said.
Bucher apologized to police and his neighbors at the Fox Run RV Park, 9000 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, during a hearing before Multnomah County Circuit Court Eric Bloch.
“I just want to say I’m ashamed of my actions, very ashamed of my actions,” Bucher said. “… I want to thank Jesus Christ for not letting me get killed that day.”
Police say the trouble began earlier that day after Bucher argued with his wife. He then approached some Spanish-speaking neighbors — a pregnant woman, her husband, their 6-year-old daughter and their two older sons, who were riding bikes, Hannon said.
Bucher told them to go back to Mexico and called them a racial slur, Hannon said, and also threatened them with a knife and pointed a gun at the husband.
The couple called police. That’s when Bucher holed up in his mobile home and shot at police. The standoff ended when police fired tear gas through the home’s windows and Bucher came out to surrender, Hannon said.
But Bucher wouldn’t show his hands, so police sent a police dog at him, Hannon said. Bucher ended up choking the dog but not seriously injuring it before officers arrested him, Hannon said.
Bucher suffered a wound to his arm — possibly from shrapnel — from a police gun. Police also shocked him with a Taser.
Last month, Bucher pleaded no contest to two counts of attempted aggravated murder and two counts of second-degree intimidation, which is a hate crime.
Bucher’s criminal history includes two convictions for first-degree sodomy in 1989.
Jazmine Lopez-Borja, the neighbor whose family Bucher threatened, said she’s most upset because Bucher terrified her children. She has sought counseling for them.
“This thing that happened, it profoundly hurt my family,” Lopez-Borja said through an interpreter. “It turned a normal day into something disastrous.”
Lopez-Borja said no one has the right “to attack us because of our race, our color, because of the language we speak.”
Defense attorney Drake Durham told the judge that Bucher was going through “a pretty terrible time” in his life.
“He had a lot of built-up resentment about how his life was going, his relationships with his family,” Durham said. “… He just wanted to get killed that day.”
— Aimee Green
agreen@oregonian.com
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