May 29, 2019 Page 3 INSIDE L O C A L N E W S The Week in Review page 2 ‘We Miss Eddie’ Gunned down and still unsolved 25 years later D anny p eterson t he p ortlanD o bserver 25 years ago Eddie Morgan was shot to death on the corner of Northeast 42nd and Alberta in what remains an unsolved murder. The mentally chal- lenged, 46-year-old was an icon of the neighbor- hood, a kind spirit with a gruff tone who frequently walked along 42nd Avenue by announcing to his neighbors the weather report. “Looks like rain!” or “snow in the mountains!” were some of the catch phrases he would say. “We called him the Mayor of 42nd Street,” Jane Ingram, a longtime neighbor, told the Portland Ob- server. “Everybody knew Eddie…he’d stop into all the businesses and was always checking in with ev- erybody.” At about 4 a.m. on May 29, 1994, Duke Sultzer heard multiple gunshots and looked outside to see Morgan clutching a bus bench in front of the US Bank on 42nd Avenue. As he rushed to provide aid, Morgan collapsed to the sidewalk. Sultzer was cred- ited with trying to save his life with emergency CPR. Morgan was disabled from birth and the shooting was apparently random. Debra Brocato, used to talk to Eddie Morgan when he visited her flower shop, the now-closed Al- ameda Floral. “We were all just really, really shocked to hear that he was shot in a drive by,” she said. “He was just a big, sweet teddy bear.” The only description of the suspects at the time was three males in a late 1970s or early 80s dark-colored Buick or Oldsmobile. A 9mm alumi- num shell casing was spotted by Ingram’s husband, Mike Joancsik, 30 or 40 feet from where Morgan’s body was found, within a two week period of the incident, and was later picked up by police. “Thinking about it now, it gets me upset. He was probably just at the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Pete Parsons, a friend of Morgan’s and a former by pages 5-6 Arts & ENTERTAINMENT C ALENDAR M ETRO page 7 Eddie Morgan TV weathercaster. According to reports, Morgan had been con- cerned with growing crime at the time he was killed. In 1994 the per-capita homicide rate in Portland was 10 per 100,000 people; more than double the 4 per 100,000 deaths recorded last year, according to Portland Police Bureau and US Census statistics. A photo of then-Mayor Vera Katz honoring Mor- gan in a ceremony that took place just a few weeks before his death used to adorn the wall of the now shuttered Magoo’s Tavern on 42nd Avenue. Morgan would frequently visit the establishment, where Sul- tzer tended bar, to have conversations with neigh- bors, though he was not a drinker, Joancsik said. Morgan lived with his sister and mother in an apartment just two blocks east from where he took his last breath. He was also known for doing odd jobs for local businesses, often without pay. C ontinueD on p age 4 page 8 Winning School Board Candidates O PINION C LASSIFIEDS F OOD pages 9-10 pages 10 page 12 Two longtime African Amer- ican community members won election in local school board rac- es last week, Michelle DePass for Portland Public School Board, Zone 2; and Tiffani Penson for the Portland Community College Board of Directors, representing north and northeast Portland and Columbia County. DePass—who works for Port- land’s Housing Bureau--pulled in 66 percent of the vote while her closed opponent, Shanice Clarke, another African American woman and an educator, netted 29 percent. DePass’ win marks the first time in over 10 years at least one black member of the community will be represented on the seven-mem- ber Portland School Board when the district begins its new fiscal year in July. Andrew Scott, Eilidh Tiffani Penson Michelle DePass Lowery, and Amy Kohnstamm— the only person to return for an- other term—also secured seats on Portland Public School Board, the unofficial results said. Tiffani Penson--also a city worker--garnered 86 percent of the 20,600 total votes for the Portland Community College Board.