“It was kind of like nobody knew what to do"

The story of Tuesday night’s shooting inside the Portland airport terminal is disturbing. But the version of it in the O is downright hair-raising. According to an eywitness, after the crazy woman fired her gun, she stood there with the weapon on the floor, and no law enforcement responded until after the witness yelled at the cops that maybe they should do something.

Patrick Leonard, a 58-year-old Lake Oswego software engineer,... had just landed after a four-hour flight from Houston and texted his wife, then went to the restroom near the checkpoint at the D and E concourses.

Leonard heard two very loud “booms” that he said sounded like gunshots. Spooked, he crept along a wall toward the restroom exit while another man washed his hands. Leonard peeked out and saw a woman standing about 5 feet to his right.

Leonard got her attention and asked what the loud sounds were. She said the sounds were gunshots. Leonard asked if she was sure and she stepped back several feet to reveal she had been standing over a pistol on the airport floor.

“Yeah,” the woman said, Leonard recalled. “I dropped it and it went off into the
ceiling.”.... “Pretty hard for it to go off twice, though I guess it is possible,” Leonard said.

The woman appeared relatively calm, he said. She told him she was going to leave the gun on the floor and wait for the authorities.

They talked for about 30 seconds, but nobody appeared to be on the way, Leonard said, so he decided to try to get someone’s attention himself.

He said he waved his arms in the air and yelled to Transportation Security Administration staff he saw about 50 yards away.

Leonard said he shouted: “Hello, help! Could we get a little help over there? The two loud noises were gunshots. The gun is lying on the floor right here, and the woman said she dropped it.”

Another 30 seconds passed before Leonard said what looked like a construction crew approached them — about four people wearing orange vests and hard hats. They didn’t look like police officers and didn’t appear to be armed, he said.

From about 20 yards away, they told Leonard and the woman to leave the gun and the woman’s two bags on the floor and walk toward them. They told Leonard he was free to go, and he did.

“I was surprised they didn’t want to interview me,” Leonard said. “It was kind of like nobody knew what to do. It was kind of weird.”

The Port of Portland spends billions of tax dollars on that airport terminal, decade after decade, to make it as sleek and pretty as possible. But this being Portland, it's no refuge from the junkies, the gangsters, and the occasional violent psycho. Some days it feels like the Port is putting lipstick on a pig.