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Portland police officers took a skateboard into evidence at Tom McCall Waterfront Park Monday, just blocks away from where a 70-year-old employee of the Portland Outdoor Store was assaulted and injured.

(Stuart Tomlinson/The Oregonian)

A photograph on a post near the checkout counter at The Outdoor Store at Southwest Third Avenue and Oak Street says it all: “Larry Allen: 30 years on the job.”

On a piece of white tape, someone has added a plus sign.

And as he has done for most of those 30 years, Allen, 70, went out to hose down the sidewalk beneath the aging, green sign of the Southwest Portland landmark on Monday afternoon.

Co-worker Miguel Figueroa said some days the street kids hang out on the sidewalk and are no problem. Other days, they are belligerent.

A criminalist with the Portland Police Bureau photographs the area around the Portland Outdoor Store where an employee was assaulted with a skateboard Monday afternoon.

Figueroa said at around 2:30 p.m. Allen asked them to move so he could hose off the sidewalk. They said they were not on store property and refused.

Seconds later, Figueroa said, he heard something smash against the store’s north side windows and ran outside.

“Larry was on the ground bleeding,’’ Figueroa said. He and passersby used napkins and tissue to stanch the flow of blood from a gash above Allen’s right eye. He was cut and scratched on his arms, too. Figueroa said it appeared Allen lost consciousness for about 20 seconds.

Allen, who was woozy when he came too, asked Figueroa what happened. He told Figueroa that a girl had struck him, with what police later said was a skateboard. He asked Figueroa to call his roommate to come to OHSU Hospital, where Allen was admitted into the trauma system. On Monday night, he was listed in fair condition.

Larry Allen, 70.

At Tom McCall Waterfront Park, officers seized a white skateboard that may have been used in the assault, said Sgt. Pete Simpson, a spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau. They believe the suspect was a man in his 20s.

Brad Popick, store manager, said the city has done nothing to address the problem of aggressive, confrontational people hanging out in front of the store and in the area.

“This has been going on for five years,’’ Popick said. “The only people who don't seem to understand it is City Hall…they have the guts of a peanut.”

Popick said the kids are confrontational, constantly high and “have more money than the kids who come in to the store."

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call the Portland Police Bureau assault detectives at 503-823-0400.

--Stuart Tomlinson