More Portland unrest as friends mourn slain right-wing activist

Protests flared again in Portland overnight on Monday as demonstrators clashed with police on the streets of the city which after months of sometimes violent confrontations has become a focal point of the US presidential race.

Police used smoke grenades and pepper balls to control the crowd of protesters. Police acknowledged in a statement that officers “deployed some crowd control munitions” and said 19 people were arrested, mostly on charges of disorderly conduct and interfering with police.

About 200-300 people gathered in the downtown area to march to the apartment of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler to demand his resignation. They were seen setting fire to wooden benches and plastic rubbish bins along the march.

Police declared the gathering unlawful and later upgraded it to a riot after protesters set fire in an apartment building. The area was secured to allow firefighters to respond to the situation, police said.

Portland has seen nightly protests since the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, in Minneapolis on May 25. Hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested since the protests began.

In recent weeks, tensions between right- and left-wing groups in the city have roiled downtown.

A supporter of a right-wing group who was shot dead on Saturday night was mourned by both friends and President Donald Trump as a victim of mob violence while an online fundraising effort raised tens of thousands of dollars in his memory.

Just hours before he was shot in the chest, 39-year-old Aaron “Jay” Danielson and a friend were seen heading downtown to protect a flag-waving caravan of Trump supporters. They wore hats with the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a group that has clashed with left-wing protesters in Portland for years, and appeared armed with knives and paintball guns.

“Paint is a defensive mechanism. Paint is not bullets,” Trump said during his White House briefing on Monday, adding that someone connected with violent protests “shot a young gentleman and killed him. Not with paint but with a bullet.”

In mobile phone video of the shooting, both Danielson and his assailant were seen on a darkened street. At least three shots rang out in a smoky haze, followed by images of Danielson crumpled on the ground as the friend, Chandler Pappas, slaps him in the face and rolls him over, yelling “Jay! Jay!”

“He was a good man and he was just killed senselessly for no reason other than he believed something different than they do,” Pappas told supporters during a rally Sunday. “He was Christian. He was conservative.”

Added Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson on his Facebook page: “We love Jay and he had such a huge heart. God bless him and the life he lived.”