This is the fourth time I’ve compiled a list of my top stories of the year, and it’s rarely a pleasant experience.
I’ve had the privilege of reporting on justice and public safety in Salem since 2021. But the result is often the same theme: tragedy.
I’m extremely grateful to the grieving spouses, parents, siblings and children who have put their trust in me during their darkest times. Whether we spoke during an interview or in private, each of them wanted the community to know the story of their loved one.
On a more positive note, I continue to be amazed by the support of our readers. I’ve been at Salem Reporter for half of its existence and gotten to watch our readership grow into a partnership. I’m thankful for every tip, every word of encouragement, every critique I’ve received over the years. If you appreciate our work, just know we couldn’t do it without you.
Here are some stories I will always remember.
For weeks, all we knew was that a 15-year-old boy was shot dead and found in a car. An eventual arrest revealed that the victim was Matthew J. Newman. His death devastated his mother and two young siblings. It was a tragic part of the rise in deadly violence involving teenagers that Salem has seen in recent years.
His mother had the courage to speak publicly about the irreversible loss her family had experienced. Her doing so ensured that the community would remember Matthew as more than just a statistic. He was a sweet, thoughtful boy who overcame a difficult childhood, earned good grades, dedicated himself to sports and made many friends who cherished him.
The criminal case has been quiet. Authorities have not publicly identified a motive or released an account of what happened. The suspect, Gage J. Clark Adkins, 19, is scheduled to face a jury trial on June 9, 2025.
The death of Will N. Schultz, 33, in the Marion County Jail was cause for alarm. How could a man die of a fentanyl overdose while in the care and custody of law enforcement? An outside investigation into Schultz’s death dragged on for almost a year. Meantime, we requested medical records related to inmates in the previous two years who had overdosed in the jail or immediately after being released. The 147 pages of documents the county released showed that illegal drugs were still being smuggled into the jail a year after Schultz’s death, with county officials doing little to investigate or stop it.
Another inmate who provided Schultz the drugs, Samuel L. Grill, 33, of Salem, pleaded guilty on Nov. 1 to delivery of fentanyl and supplying contraband. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Candidly, I wasn’t even in Salem on the day of the shooting at Bush’s Pasture Park – and I still felt the utter chaos as details unfolded and concern rippled throughout the city. Gunfire in the otherwise peaceful and quiet park left 16-year-old Jose Vazquez-Valenzuela dead and two other teen boys injured. The shooting also sent nearby South Salem High School and Salem Hospital into lockdown. I worked with Reporter Abbey McDonald and Managing Editor Rachel Alexander to produce this account.
The next day, the suspect, Nathaniel S. McCrae, 16, turned himself in to police. The case is still pending in juvenile court and the Marion County District Attorney’s Office is seeking to prosecute McCrae as an adult.
The shooting came less than 24 hours after city officials held a community meeting to reveal their strategy to deal with gun violence in Salem. A city report issued months earlier showed a growing number of shootings involving minors as both the shooters and the victims.
Before city officials last year confirmed that gun violence was on the rise in Salem, I started working on an investigative series that appears next on this list. As I did so, it became clear to me that there was an active gang war happening in Salem that almost no one was talking about. Nine months after the shooting at Bush’s Pasture Park, authorities still have yet to explain what motivated the gunfire or whether it was another instance of gang violence. But Oni Marchbanks, a Salem community activist, said witnesses have told her the park shooting had a gang connection, though she declined to publicly elaborate. Signs of gang involvement in the shooting raised questions about the role that gangs are playing in Salem’s escalating street violence.
I’ll never forget the day that Salem police gunned down 16-year-old Bobby Brown in a shootout in July 2022. Officers were trying to arrest him for the daytime shootings of two young men in downtown Salem that spring. The three shootings, culminating in Bobby’s death, left the Salem community stunned. For nearly a year, I set out to learn Bobby’s story and understand how a person so young could end up dying in a gunfight with police.
Bobby was born with meth in his system, placed in foster care and eventually adopted when he was 4. By all accounts, Bobby was a bright boy with potential to succeed in life. But as he grew older, he felt abandoned by his birth parents and didn’t connect well with those who raised him. He had his first run-in with the law at age 12 and eventually moved up the ladder of resources for troubled kids in Oregon. Meantime, his desire to connect with peers made him a perfect target to be swept up by gangs. Bobby became embroiled in a gang rivalry, resulting in the shootings that made him one of Salem’s most wanted. Salem police considered him so dangerous that they deployed a SWAT team to arrest him. As they closed in on Bobby in unmarked undercover vehicles and deployed a flashbang to disorient him, he started shooting at the officers, who returned fire. A friend who was present for the shooting later wondered if Bobby thought he was under attack by rival gang members.
We couldn’t have told this story without the help of Bobby’s mother, his parole officer, his friend and the Marion County Juvenile Department, which provided records ordinarily kept secret. The series showed that Bobby represents a growing number of Salem teenagers in deep trouble – and that even the young son of a physician can slowly spiral out of control.
I did a double take when I got an email from Marion County Circuit Court Judge Audrey Broyles earlier this year. For a sitting judge to reach out to a reporter about anything is remarkably rare, as she herself acknowledged.
Until this year, Broyles was tasked with deciding the fate of the county’s most mentally ill people charged with crimes. She now shares that responsibility with several other judges. Broyles recently challenged a federal judge who in 2022 restricted how long people can stay at Oregon State Hospital in Salem, regardless of whether their condition has improved. She contacted me to talk about those federal rules, which she said have created a public safety crisis in the Salem area and across Oregon that the average citizen isn’t aware of. This was a unique opportunity to hear from a judge who’s been at the center of Oregon’s floundering mental health system.
There was no public announcement about the collision that killed 58-year-old Mario Lara. Only through court records did I learn that in March 2022, an intoxicated man drove his pickup truck into Lara’s path while the longtime firefighter rode his motorcycle in northeast Salem, leaving him with serious injuries. Lara died nearly two months later. He had just beaten prostate cancer, got engaged and was preparing to retire after protecting Oregon’s forests for over three decades. One of the many ways he inspired his children was by steering clear of alcohol and drugs, only to lose his life because of an intoxicated driver.
The driver, Christopher S. Bolds, 41, was sentenced in September to three years and nine months in prison. At the sentencing hearing, Lara’s children showed courage as they recounted their father’s life story in detail.
In the criminal case of a DEA agent who caused a collision that killed a Salem cyclist, a recent day-long hearing in a Eugene federal courthouse felt like a mini-trial. Witnesses took the stand, including Agent Samuel Landis, who spoke for himself for the first time. It was also the first time I saw in person some of the people I had been writing about for over a year — the defense attorneys and prosecutors arguing over the case, DEA agents and Salem police officers who were with Landis on the day of the crash, and the family of cyclist Marganne Allen.
The family sat solemnly throughout the proceedings, even as U.S. District Court Judge Michael McShane said that Landis is entitled to immunity from prosecution. In doing so, the judge signaled that he would drop the single charge against Landis of criminally negligent homicide, though he has yet to issue a final order.
The decision prompted Allen’s husband, Mark Meleason, to speak out publicly for the first time on behalf of his family. In a written statement, Maleason said that the agent’s driving conduct “was like playing Russian Roulette with his vehicle aimed at the public.”
The Salem Police Department has made one message clear over the last year or so: deadly street violence is on the rise. That has resulted in a joint effort which Salem-area law enforcement agencies are calling the “Community Violence Reduction Initiative.” The work is intended to bring together law enforcement, community organizations and service providers to scale back deadly violence in the capital city. A consultant hired by the city made recommendations last month at a Salem City Council meeting.
The meeting made me think back to the only column I’ve ever written, back in July 2023, about the Northgate neighborhood’s Fun Friday social – specifically, what residents valued about their neighborhood and what they’d change. Several residents, writing on sticky notes for our poster board, raised concerns about gang activity and violence in their neighborhood. Among them was a young child, who succinctly declared, “Get rid of the guns from kids.” I wrote at the time that it appeared gangs were the underbelly of much of Salem’s violent crime, and while it was clear to the people of Northgate, law enforcement officials rarely, if ever, spoke publicly about the matter.
It’s almost jarring to see how far that has shifted. The recent city council meeting was just one of several this year where officials have talked not just candidly about street violence in Salem, but with sensitivity about the socioeconomic reasons behind much of the gunfire. What actions are or aren’t taken from here could define the state of violent crime in the city, but seeing such conversations take place publicly among people from all walks of life feels refreshing and much-needed. This past year, in real time, I have watched the community unite and take steps to reduce what we can all agree is a critical problem.
Contact reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian: [email protected] or 503-929-3053.
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Ardeshir Tabrizian has covered criminal justice and housing for Salem Reporter since September 2021. As an Oregon native, his award-winning watchdog journalism has traversed the state. He has done reporting for The Oregonian, Eugene Weekly and Malheur Enterprise.
