A Portland man who bludgeoned a stranger to death with a cinder block was found guilty but insane Friday and sentenced to a lifetime of supervision by the state Psychiatric Security Review Board.
Abel Nistor was living on the streets and off his medication, his attorney said, when he encountered 70-year-old John Garcia among the pillars supporting the Marquam Bridge about 4:30 a.m. March 22, 2024.
Onlookers heard Nistor cry out, “He needs to die!” while straddling Garcia and punching him repeatedly in the face, according to a probable cause affidavit.
A nearby security guard, Alicia Duncan, saw the bloody cement block and rushed to Garcia’s aid — only for Nistor to knock the guard to the ground with a kick and dive for the weapons on Duncan’s duty belt.
“He was determined to continue the rampage to anyone in his path,” Duncan said in court Friday.
Police and first responders from a nearby firehouse arrived soon after and took Nistor into custody.
It was his second arrest in about two weeks. On March 5, Nistor had approached a stranger walking to work near Southwest Sixth Avenue and Harrison Street and asked the man if he liked dogs, according to a probable cause affidavit.
When the other man, Scott Bennett, tried to move on, Nistor sucker punched him in the head and then stomped on his face, breaking Bennett’s nose and permanently scarring his lips.
“If I am able to someday forgive him, this forgiveness will not be for him, it will be for me — to set myself free from the stranglehold I’ve found myself in,” Bennett said. “But any forgiveness he may receive does not relinquish him from accountability.”
Bennett said he has trouble walking past the spot of the assault to this day.
Nistor, now 30 declined to speak in court but pleaded guilty to second-degree attempted assault and fourth-degree assault in Bennett’s case.
Multnomah County Circuit Judge Jenna Plank also found him guilty but insane of second-degree murder for Garcia’s death. The judge sentenced him to treatment at the Oregon State Hospital and a lifetime of supervision by the psychiatric review board.
Defense attorney Cameron Taylor said he met Nistor in a holding cell about 36 hours after the killing.
His behavior that day was nothing like the man Taylor said he knew now, gesturing to Nistor as a quiet smile crept over Nistor’s face.
Nistor was stable during his previous psychiatric commitment, which was part of a case involving domestic violence against his family.
“He just got released with no resources, no transition, no hand-off and — shock of shocks! — he went back to being floridly psychotic,” Taylor said. “And a month and a half later these incidents occurred. He was failed. We have got to do a better job.”
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