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PORTLAND: Police shot and killed a self-proclaimed anti-fascist activist in Washington state Thursday night as they headed to arrest him on suspicion that he shot dead a right-wing counter-protester last weekend in Portland, Oregon, they said. The authorities.
Michael Reinoehl, 48, wanted on a murder charge, was armed with a semiautomatic handgun when members of a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force shot him dead outside an apartment complex in Los Angeles. Olympia, Washington suburbs, according to the Marshals Service and the Thurston. County Sheriff’s Office.
His sister, who asked not to be identified, said her “estranged” brother believed the United States “was going to war.”
“He believed the war was here, and look where that got him; where it took us, “he told Reuters in a text message.
Two men are dead. He is one of them. Two families have been thrown into chaos and they all seem to be more in arms than ever. I believe in something different. I think the peaceful majority is stronger than that. “
Reinoehl was in a car when police opened fire, causing him to flee on foot when four officers shot him, Thurston County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Ray Brady told reporters.
Brady could not confirm whether Reinoehl fired at the police, but witnesses told reporters that a hail of bullets destroyed car windows and hit nearby houses.
Flowers were placed under the mailbox where Reinoehl fell and where an officer tried to resuscitate him before he was pronounced dead at the scene, according to onlooker videos.
A court in Multnomah County, Oregon, had charged Reinoehl with the murder of Aaron Danielson on Saturday, and Portland police issued an arrest warrant for him, asking U.S. marshals to locate him.
Reinoehl, who provided security for Black Lives Matter at the Portland protests, in a video interview with Vice broadcast hours before his death, appeared to admit to shooting Danielson, saying the shooting “felt like the start of a war.” .
He said he acted in self-defense.
Danielson, 39, was part of a caravan of supporters of Republican President Donald Trump traveling in vans to downtown Portland and confronting protesters who demonstrated against racial injustice and police brutality.
Danielson, a Portland man who ran a specialty moving company in the city for more than 20 years, was a supporter of the right-wing Christian group Patriot Prayer.
Danielson’s friend, Michael Hamilton, did not see justice in Reinoehl’s death and said he and his family were receiving death threats and being called “Nazis” after he opened a GoFundMe page for Danielson.
“Now you want me to live in fear? Not likely, ”said Hamilton. “I also refuse to kill my brothers and sisters. If they want a civil war they will have to kill me like a dog in the street like they did with my friend, a good and decent man ”.
Antifa
Danielson and Reinoehl faced each other in escalating clashes between left and right groups in Portland.
The city has become a focus of the presidential campaign after its nearly 100 days of protests since George Floyd, a black man, died in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25.
Trump, who has made law and order the main theme of his re-election bid, singled out Portland as one of several cities run by Democrats that he calls “anarchist jurisdictions.”
On Friday, the US Department of Justice directly linked Reinoehl to the left-wing Antifa movement, the first time it did so for a protester facing federal charges in Portland.
At the national level, Antifa is a largely unstructured far-left movement whose supporters generally aim to confront those they consider authoritarian or racist.
“The Antifa groups murdered my friend,” said Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson, who on Tuesday asked his supporters not to seek revenge.
Facebook Inc said Friday that it removed the Patriot Prayer and Gibson pages, saying it was part of its efforts to remove “violent social militias” from the platform.
Gibson said that Facebook should also ban the Antifa pages.
In social media posts, Reinoehl, a father of two, described himself as a professional snowboarder, an Army veteran and “100% Antifa.”
“Every revolution needs people who are willing and ready to fight,” he said in an Instagram post on June 16. “It will be a war and, like all wars, there will be casualties.”
