Kenneth Voyles says he was homeless, hungry and cold when he decided to break into a Portland countertop fabrication business in the pre-dawn hours of a winter day to find something to eat and possibly make off with some loot.
He figured no one was there. But he was in for a surprise when the owner — who lived in a back room — turned the corner and found him.
Owner James Grant threw a cup of urine in Voyles’ face, lobbed heavy tiles toward his body and then momentarily left one area of the building to retrieve a gun from under his pillow before returning to shoot Voyles — who said he was trying to escape — three times in the arm and torso.
Voyles says Grant’s reaction far exceeded the bounds of acceptable behavior and is asking a Multnomah County Circuit Court jury to rule that the business owner must pay him $10 million.
The trial, which started Monday and will stretch into next week, raises meaty and sometimes uncomfortable questions about homelessness, gun ownership and what does or does not constitute vigilante justice.
Also key to the trial is whether Grant, who has homes in Nevada and China but testified that he lives at the business when in Portland, had a right to sleep there. City officials previously had found him in violation of the industrial district’s zoning rules and told him not to reside there, but Oregon law allows people to defend their homes — but not businesses — with lethal force from intruders.
Both sides agree on many of the basic facts of the case.
It was about 5:30 a.m. on March 6, 2023, when Voyles pushed his way through an outer gate, pried plywood off a garage door of Touchstone Granite & Marble on Northeast Columbia Boulevard, then cut through some metal bars to squeeze inside.
Voyles testified that, flashlight in hand, he had picked up a Dewalt bag with a drill inside that he planned to take with him and then rounded a corner to discover Grant walking toward him in a closed showroom of the business.
Grant had recently woken up for the day and was naked, with what appeared to be a towel over his shoulder.
The encounter was caught on surveillance video.
Voyles, clearly startled by the presence of another person, shouted, “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” in an increasingly high-pitched voice.
Grant threw the urine that he happened to be carrying in a cup in his hand. Then Voyles shouted, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” as he dashed toward the garage door where he had entered. Grant chucked a heavy tile toward Voyles but missed. Then Grant followed.
A second confrontation unfolded seconds later near the garage door but wasn’t captured on video. That’s where the stories diverge.
After Grant caught up to Voyles in the garage area, Voyles said he pleaded with him to stop throwing things at him.
“I go, ‘Stop!’ Like, ‘Please stop!’” Voyles recounted. “He’s assaulting me. … He was pretty angry.”
Voyles said Grant left the garage area, so Voyles picked up a large pair of bolt cutters in hopes of cutting a padlock so he could open the garage door and flee. He said he didn’t want to try to squeeze through the opening in the door that he’d come through, in part, because he thought Grant would grab his legs as he tried to wriggle through.
Voyles said Grant returned a short while later, this time with a gun, and that’s when he simply shot him without uttering a word.
“At that point I turn to look at him, and I’m like ‘What the f—?’ And he goes, ‘You’re going to die,’” Voyles said.
Voyles told jurors that he didn’t think Grant “was going to let me out alive.”
“You see everyone that you care about, their faces flashing in front of you,” Voyles said.
In desperation, Voyles said, he dove toward the hole in the garage door and, to his shock, made it out to the road, where he tried to flag down passing cars, but no one stopped. Eventually, some construction workers found him on the ground and police later arrived, he said.
A menacing man, then self-defense
Grant, however, told jurors that he was not aware that Voyles was yelling apologies for breaking into his business because he wasn’t wearing his hearing aids that morning. Grant said he chased after Voyles and also went to grab his gun because he didn’t want the burglar to get away.
“I wanted him arrested,” Grant said.
Grant said he started Touchstone Granite & Marble more than 30 years ago. In all that time and amid multiple reports he’d made of break-ins, he said, police had never shown up to investigate.
“They just called me and did a report over the phone,” Grant said.
The morning of the shooting, however, Grant said police arrived right away.
Grant said it was moments earlier that he had decided to hold Voyles at gunpoint. And that it was only after he reentered the garage area with his gun that Grant, who was 70 at the time, worried that Voyles, who was 43, would seriously hurt him. Grant said the younger man lifted the bolt cutters above his head and moved a little bit toward him.
“I said, ‘Get on the ground. Get on the ground. Get on the ground. Get on the ground,” Grant recounted. “And he looked very agitated. Looked like he was getting ready to attack me. Then I shot three times.”
Grant added: “My adrenaline was flowing, to just protect myself.”
Grant said he didn’t say anything to Voyles and that he wasn’t trying to kill him.
“I didn’t want to do deadly force,” Grant said.
Grant had a concealed weapons permit, is an Army veteran and said he has easily fired more than 10,000 rounds at firing ranges.
Police and prosecutors sided with Grant by filing no charges against him but several against Voyles, who has multiple convictions for stealing cars and burglarizing businesses. At the time of his confrontation with Grant, Voyles had methamphetamine in his system, according to Grant’s attorney.
Voyles pleaded no contest and was convicted of first-degree burglary — of a dwelling, not a business — and menacing, for threatening Grant’s safety. As part of a plea deal, he was sentenced to five years of drug treatment court. He also ended up serving more than a year in prison for an unrelated string of car thefts.
But Voyles’ attorney, David Wallace, faulted the thoroughness of the police investigation. Wallace told jurors in opening statements that if Grant had been so fearful, he could have retreated to another room that had a door that locked.
“If you were in such danger, why are you going back in when there was a locked door?” Wallace said.
“What this case will be about is use of force,” Wallace continued. “Whether or not each of those bullets, each of those shots, was justified.”
Stephanie Schilling, an attorney representing Grant, however, said Grant had every right to defend himself against “a stranger in the dark” who had threatened him with raised bolt cutters.
“The law does not require that James Grant wait for a blow,” Schilling said.
What’s more, Schilling said, her client exercised restraint by leaving 13 of the 16 rounds in his gun.
“Kenneth Voyles is here filing this lawsuit, and he does not deserve to be rewarded,” Schilling said. “And James Grant does not deserve to be punished.”
The trial is expected to conclude next week.
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