Before sentencing a man for an explosively violent series of attacks on a disabled woman who lives on the street, a Washington County judge had a message for any judges who might consider his decision overly harsh on appeal.
They need only to review the surveillance video to know why he gave Timothy Fitzgerald 25 more years in prison than the prosecution recommended, said Circuit Judge Brandon Thompson.
Judges who serve on the Oregon Court of Appeals and the Oregon Supreme Court “don’t read the transcripts,” Thompson said. “They just make rulings. I am putting that out there to be very clear to the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court that this video is very much instructive in the sentence I am about to give.”
Thompson went on to impose a sentence of nearly 66 years – a de facto life sentence – for the 54-year-old defendant with no previous criminal record.
“In no way should it be anything less under the circumstances,” Thompson said.
He barely concealed his anger over Fitzgerald’s sexual assaults of the 46-year-old woman who told authorities she uses a wheelchair after being struck by cars while sleeping on the streets around the Portland area.
“This is literally an individual taking advantage of a very vulnerable individual who also happens to be in a wheelchair,” Thompson said.
The woman testified during the two-day trial in January but did not appear in court during Fitzgerald’s sentencing.
A jury found Fitzgerald guilty of first-degree assault and felony sex offenses for attacking the woman over 45 minutes in the early hours of Oct. 13, 2023.
Fitzgerald did not testify in his own defense and told authorities he did not remember the assaults. His attorney called no witnesses.
The woman had been sleeping under her wheelchair along a sidewalk in downtown Beaverton near the transit center, according to a memorandum filed by Washington County Deputy District Attorney Alyssa Camp.
The prosecutor wrote that the woman first encountered Fitzgerald about midnight as he left a restaurant where he had watched a football game.
He was walking toward the transit center, planning to ride the MAX line home to Portland, when he saw the woman, the court filing states.
The woman asked Fitzgerald if he had a cigarette, later telling law enforcement officers that she felt “regret as soon as the words fell out of her mouth,” Camp wrote.
Fitzgerald kicked her in the face twice with a steel-toed boot, breaking bones in her face, according to the filing. He “acted like he was going to walk away again,” but instead returned and kicked her a third time, Camp’s memo states.
He ordered her to follow him and she did in her wheelchair and he sexually assaulted her repeatedly at two nearby locations. The crimes were captured on surveillance cameras, Camp said.
He stopped only when a street sweeper pulled into the parking lot, Camp wrote. At that point, Fitzgerald walked away, she said.
In an interview after the sentencing, Camp praised the woman for coming forward and taking part in the court process.
“This is one of those cases that even when you’re involved in the criminal justice system really sits with you for a while,” she said. “It is one of the more egregious and violent assaults that I have seen.”
Detailed data on violence committed against homeless women in Oregon is hard to come by.
A recent report by the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, a state agency that collects and analyzes statistics for policy makers among others, noted that people who experience homelessness are victims of crime at higher rates than the rest of the population.
A 2023 study out of Minnesota found that while women accounted for about a third of people living outside, 57% of women had been attacked, compared to 48% of men.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Fitzgerald wore jail scrubs and sat next to his court-appointed lawyer, Darren Redshaw.
Fitzgerald, who told police he had worked at the Value Village in Tigard, spoke briefly during the hearing, telling Thompson that his life, as well as the victim’s, had irrevocably changed since the assaults.
“I just wish I could go back and change everything, but unfortunately I can’t,” he said.
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