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Nine days after a fire damaged an East Portland house belonging to City Councilor Candace Avalos, police arrested 51-year-old Vashon Locust on suspicion of starting the blaze—but not before the blaze ignited a firestorm at City Hall last week.
Locust had been trying to stay warm. Police said he had entered a nearby shed to plug in a portable heater to an outlet, but when that didn’t work, he lit a small fire. That fire would grow to consume a carport, Avalos’ car, and the side of her home before firefighters quelled the blaze. Avalos escaped unhurt with her cat, Valentino.
Police Chief Bob Day and Fire Chief Lauren Johnson said in a joint statement that investigators’ “thorough, methodical investigation ultimately determined that this was not a targeted act of violence.” The arrest likely puts to rest speculation that the fire was an act of political violence against Avalos, a Black and Latina environmental activist and first-time city councilor.
But the Tuesday arrest comes only after the blaze caused multiple councilors last week to question the integrity of the investigation and police’s early determination that the fire did not appear to be a targeted act.
The Portland Police Bureau in its first public communication about the fire deemed it “suspicious in nature.” Within 24 hours, the bureau would reverse course and say there was no evidence to suggest the fire had been set deliberately or that it targeted Avalos.
The fire, police said in the second statement, had originated in a small storage shed adjacent to the carport in which Avalos’ car was parked. The shed belonged to a neighbor.
That statement, issued Oct. 27, jump-started much of the later controversy.
By the time police announced that there was no evidence the fire was a targeted arson, just over $14,000 in donations had flooded into a GoFundMe account set up by three of Avalos’ friends to help pay fire and insurance-related expenses. Statements of outrage and empathy had flooded in from local elected officials. Council Vice President Tiffany Koyama Lane wrote in a statement that she was “shocked and angered by what appears to be a violent attack on my friend and colleague Councilor Candace Avalos.”
But the police statement changed the tenor of the discourse. The GoFundMe, mired in complicated legal questions around restrictions on elected officials accepting money from constituents, abruptly stopped taking donations. The public statements suggesting Avalos was a victim of political violence halted. For a few days, it seemed as if the investigation would chug along undisturbed.
But in a Thursday evening blog post, Avalos took exception to police announcing they’d found nothing to suggest that the fire was meant to harm her.
Avalos told WW she was worried “police leadership may be jumping to conclusions before the investigation is complete” and in her Thursday night post connected the fire outside of her house to recent high-profile incidents of political violence.
“We still don’t know yet if the fire was targeted, or even if it was set on purpose,” Avalos wrote in the blog. “Whatever the cause, this didn’t happen in a vacuum. In our current national context, it’s hard not to connect this moment to everything happening around us—the threats, the division, the way public service sometimes puts a target on your back.”
Behind closed doors, some city councilors were putting pressure on investigators to do more, and do it more quickly. As a result, WW learned earlier this week, the Portland Police Bureau on Friday shared with Avalos’ office a list of 38 steps it had taken to investigate the blaze.
Among the steps listed: a lengthy canvass for “witnesses, surveillance video, and additional physical evidence that may have been discarded in the area by the suspect”; the towing of Avalos’ charred car to inspect it for evidence; and ongoing extra police patrols in the neighborhood following the fire. Investigators notified the bureau’s Criminal Intelligence Unit along with its Major Crimes Unit for “potential bias implications” of the fire, they told Avalos; investigators conducted an “exhaustive forensic scene examination and reconstruction that lasted approximately 10 hours”; and police obtained surveillance footage showing a person walking in the parking lot of Avalos’ complex around the time of the fire, which they then distributed publicly in hopes someone could identify the person. (Another step taken later on: Investigators contacted TriMet to “obtain surveillance footage on all TriMet buses, trains, and platforms to conduct an extensive search for subjects matching the clothing description for the subject walking through the parking lot.”)
Fire investigators also “coordinated with private insurance investigators on Oct. 28th and reviewed the scene with [a U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] fire investigator assisting,” the memo explained. And police patrolled the area around Avalos’ complex to “identify the persons in the photo/video obtained to date.”
The release of this list to Avalos demonstrated how sensitive the case had become, as figures at both ends of the political spectrum became targets of violence. It also suggested the Police Bureau was aware of its fraught relationship with its critics in elected office, four years after a police union official leaked a report falsely linking then-City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty to a hit-and-run crash.
Avalos has been a frequent critic of the Police Bureau and earlier this year championed a council vote to redirect $2 million in new funding earmarked for police to Portland Parks & Recreation, a move that generated ire from critics to her right, who cast it as an attempt by the City Council’s progressive caucus to undermine cops at the expense of public safety. Before becoming a city councilor, Avalos served on the Portland Citizen Review Committee, a volunteer board that fields complaints about police services and makes policy recommendations to the Police Bureau.
Avalos chief of staff Jamey Evenstar said the numbered list provided by police in fact supported the councilor’s concern that the bureau may have jumped to conclusions about the nature of the fire.
“That list clearly demonstrates that there is a lot of information they have not yet acquired, so we continue to ask that they refrain from speculating on the cause with the public until the evidence is clear one way or the other,” Evenstar said at the time, adding that Avalos and her staff still “greatly appreciate the steps that police and fire have taken so far to investigate the cause of the fire.”
Questions persisted into the weekend about the integrity of the investigation.
Over the weekend, District 1 Councilor Loretta Smith, who has sometimes clashed on policy matters with Avalos on the dais, went to bat for her fellow councilor. Smith asked colleagues on the council if they’d join her in hosting a press conference requesting a more “comprehensive investigation” of the fire.
Smith told WW on Monday that “fire represents a lot for me as a Black elected.”
“Medgar Evers’ house got blown up. Dr. King’s house. Malcolm. All of these things have been associated with speaking truth to power. Just like Candace has been speaking truth to power,” Smith told WW. “Immediately, we think about these things. Candace has every right to feel everything she’s feeling right now.”
Police Chief Bob Day, after catching wind of Smith’s plans for a press conference, spoke to her over the weekend. She dropped the idea.
“To his credit, he carefully outlined all the things that he was going to do that have not been made public,” Smith said. “I felt a little better after I talked to the chief.”
Still, Smith said, she believes the police erred by putting out the statement on Monday there was no evidence that the fire was an arson targeting Avalos.
“The city must do everything we need to do to make sure we’re investigating every lead before we send out to the public that she’s not a target,” Smith said. “Those words did not comfort her, saying that it wasn’t a threat.”
Chief Day said in a statement to WW on Monday that Police Bureau detectives had from the outset been “fully committed to uncovering the truth.”
“Our investigators have worked around the clock, collecting evidence, canvassing for witnesses and video, and coordinating with multiple agencies to ensure a thorough, professional, and exhaustive investigation,” Day said. “I stand firmly behind their work and their integrity. This is a complex investigation, and we remain committed to following the evidence wherever it leads—for Councilor Avalos and for our entire community.”
The fire outside Avalos’ house did come at an exceptionally tender time for the city. The state is in a high-profile legal battle with the Trump administration over his attempted deployment of National Guard troops to Portland, which he’s falsely called “war ravaged.” That standoff has catapulted Portland into the national spotlight, and a number of the 12 city councilors have appeared on national television in recent weeks to speak out against the deployment, significantly upping their public exposure at a time of deep political polarization.
Indeed, in her Thursday blog post, Avalos said a policy staffer in her office recently received an email that read, “hope the entire state burns and your house is the first one to go.” She wrote that the email demonstrates “how quickly words can turn into threats, and threats can turn into harm.”
The city is providing daily security to Avalos. In a briefing after the fire, and before police said the evidence at that time did not point to a targeted attack, the city offered to conduct safety assessments on each of the city councilors’ dwellings.
Mayor Keith Wilson said in a statement Monday, “I empathize deeply” with Avalos, but he defended the city’s investigation.
“I have full confidence that the dedicated public servants at the Portland Police Bureau and Portland Fire & Rescue will continue to carry out this investigation with transparency and integrity.”
During a press conference attended by District Attorney Nathan Vasquez, Chief Day, and Fire Chief Lauren Johnson on Tuesday afternoon, the top law enforcement brass reaffirmed that the fire was not a politically motivated incident, but instead a case of a person with a history of mental illness attempting to find warmth.
In Avalos’ absence, Vasquez read a statement he says she asked him to relay at the press conference.
“When I asked for patience and cautioned against speculation last week, it was because we are living in a moment where deeply rooted, preconceived ideas about homelessness are being reinforced and weaponized against our most vulnerable neighbors,” Avalos’ statement read. “Across the country, we’re seeing the dehumanization of people experiencing homelessness pushed at the highest levels of power, used to justify cruelty instead of care. And that national climate inevitably shapes how we see and treat one another here at home.”
Avalos’ statement comes in stark contrast to the remarks she made last week, which at no point conveyed concern that the public would rush to assume a person living on the streets had started the blaze.
Avalos says she hopes to “connect with [Locust] when the time is right.”
