A Multnomah County jury convicted a Portland man in a downtown killing with no apparent motive Wednesday after a five-day trial. But jurors acquitted him of all charges in a similar slaying that had happened 14 hours earlier.
Police arrested Riz’o Lucas around noon April 8, 2022, just minutes after bystanders saw him pull out a pistol and shoot Fars Giday in the head outside the White Stag building on Northwest Naito Parkway.
Officers found Lucas blocks away, clad in a black ski mask, goggles and other clothing that matched surveillance footage of the single-shot execution. The gun was still in Lucas’ backpack.
Jurors had no doubt that Lucas killed Giday and returned a guilty verdict Wednesday of second-degree murder.
Footage from a nearby light-rail station showed Lucas, now 21, observing Giday for 10 minutes before the attack, senior prosecutor Glen Banfield told the jury Tuesday.
“He’s just sitting there, watching him, almost like he’s playing with his food,” Banfield said. “When the time is right, he moves in for the kill.”
Giday, 33, was smoking a cigarette and caught unaware by the gunshot. He stumbled away and collapsed under the Burnside Bridge and succumbed in an ambulance. He was also known as Fars Gebrehiwot.
Though Lucas made no statements to investigators, authorities soon pegged him as the alleged killer of Jennifer Drain, who had been shot the night before, April 7, at about 10 p.m.
The jury disagreed, acquitting Lucas of the murder charge in Drain’s case.
Drain, also 33, had just nestled down in her tent on Northwest Burnside Street near the Roseland Theatre when someone shot her once in the head from outside the shelter.
But whoever pulled the trigger fled — leaving behind no cell phone data, DNA evidence or cartridge casing, which prosecutors theorized had failed to eject from the handgun.
Prosecutors argued that surveillance footage showed a masked phantom trailing behind Drain back to her camp. The man’s outfit featured different pants and shoes, at the least, to the person caught on tape watching Giday.
Defense attorney Patrick Sweeney said the state failed to test key items for DNA evidence that could have pointed conclusively to Lucas, or ruled him out — including the man’s mask and Drain’s tent — and suggested the surveillance footage could have visual distortions.
“Their theory of the case really is: it looks similar so it must be him,” Sweeney said. “They didn’t get the actual evidence — the DNA.”
Banfield, the prosecutor, replied that there was no point in testing items found on Lucas’ person the next day, and argued distinctive logos and markings proved Giday and Drain’s killer used the same brand of backpack and mask.
“Mr. Lucas went hunting in a concrete jungle,” the prosecutor said, accusing Lucas of the serial slayings.
Oregon law required the jury to consider each killing separately, meaning the evidence in Giday’s killing had to be evaluated independently from evidence in Drain’s death.
Lucas will be sentenced for Giday’s killing on Thursday morning before Circuit Judge Heidi Moawad. He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole in 25 years.
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