Adam Haner, now home from the hospital, talked about the night he dropped by the 7-Eleven on 4th and Taylor to get a Rockstar Energy Drink.
He saw a woman attacked and robbed of her backpack in front of a crowd of people, some contributing to the mayhem, others cheering it on and some trying to stop it.
Haner said, “I seen the bag taken right in front of me. And they were hitting the person, so I just like tried to step in between it.”
Haner tried to defend the woman. She was not anyone he knew.
Some in the crowd taunted him, he said they called him a white supremacist. And they tackled his girlfriend, Tammie Martin, shoving her to the ground.
Both of them eventually got away in their separate cars.
In video, you can see some in that chaotic crowd chased him in his white Ford pickup.
He got to Broadway and Taylor when he realized his power steering failed.
Haner said, “And then, when I went to turn, I started pulling on the wheel and… ‘Wow that’s really hard to turn,’ and then I go smack into the tree. And before I even got my door open, someone was yanking me out and I hit the ground. And then I sat there for a while and they wouldn’t let me get up.”
Haner was repeatedly punched and hit until the video, too graphic for television, shows him kicked in the head which knocks him unconscious.
Adam’s girlfriend, Tammie Martin, said, “He was on the ground. What’s he doing… why? Why?”
Adam said this was not about BLM protesters fighting for justice. He says this was about street fighters looking for trouble.
In fact, Adam said, he has marched in Black Lives Matter protests. “I was for that. I’ve had cops beat me up before. I was for their cause. I do think we need some reform. I don’t think they should be down there tear-gassing us repeatedly and rubber bulleting us.”
Adam said Sunday night he was just an ordinary guy in downtown Portland. “I was just standing for myself as a citizen. And if you can’t do that on a street then what can you do? Getting a drink at a 7-Eleven in Portland, Oregon is a different story than it was two months ago.”
Adam said all he wants to do now is heal and get on with his life. He said he has no ill will towards anyone.
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