Updated November 2, 2019

Hours before police say three young teenagers shot and killed 65-year-old Ricky Malone Sr., the phone calls to 911 started coming in from North Portland residents.

A car break-in. A brutal assault with a skateboard. A rock tossed through a homeowner’s window.

By early the next morning Malone, who had been out collecting cans and bottles, was dead in the street from a shotgun blast to the chest.

The Oct. 14 killing, followed by an alleged joyride and trip to Taco Bell using Malone’s car, shocked the conscience of many.

But for those living in the St. Johns and Portsmouth neighborhoods it was the culmination of a monthslong crime spree that terrorized the tight-knit communities and was tied to a group of troubled boys and girls.

The band of teens included the three boys now charged with Malone’s murder, Aaron Criswell, 16, Richard “RJ” Rand IV, 15, and Eugene “Geno” Woodruff, 14.

Since June, they and at least four other teens have been implicated in a rash of beatings, gun crimes and burglaries, including a suspected home break-in where police believe some in the group obtained the 12-gauge shotgun used to kill Malone.

“I’m just really, really sad that it took a murder for them to be stopped,” said Anna Cools, who watched one of the boys urinate inside her car. “Apparently, nothing else was going to.”

Sgt. Kevin Allen, a Portland police spokesman, said the bureau is working to solve the outstanding cases.

“We understand the concerns of the community regarding these and all crimes that affect our neighborhoods,” Allen wrote in a statement. “Officers and detectives have been working to gather evidence and hold those who are responsible accountable.”

Criswell, Rand and Woodruff have been held in the Donald E. Long Juvenile Detention Center since their arrests on Oct. 24.

A Multnomah County grand jury this week indicted Criswell and Rand on multiple Measure 11 charges, including first-degree murder, first-degree robbery and unauthorized use of a vehicle. They will face trial in adult court.

Woodruff, who can’t be tried as an adult because of his age, is also accused of the murder.

Their group, which included Woodruff’s younger twin sisters, roved the neighborhoods at all hours, from trendy downtown St. Johns to the working class blocks north of Columbia Boulevard or east of the railroad tracks known as “The Cut,” authorities and residents said.

Many neighbors said they came to recognize the crew by sight. They could be loud and confrontational on the street. Or they were caught on home surveillance video checking cars and homes for unlocked doors.

Sometimes they got into serious trouble.

Woodruff faces more than a half-dozen criminal charges in separate Juvenile Court cases, including possession of a stolen vehicle, driving under the influence of intoxicants, burglary and trespass, records provided by Multnomah County show.

He also was on probation for theft and criminal trespass convictions from May when he was arrested in Malone’s murder. Portland Public Schools records show Woodruff had most recently attended the Pioneer program, which serves students with the most profound special education needs, but left in February.

County records show Criswell faces charges of possessing a loaded gun, obliterating identification marks on a gun, menacing, theft and harassment. He last attended Rosemary Anderson, an alternative high school, in March, according to Portland Public Schools.

Multnomah County has no juvenile records for Rand, listed on court records with an address in Clackamas County. His father, Richard Rand III, declined to comment to The Oregonian/OregonLive on Friday.

More than a dozen other neighborhood crimes remain under investigation or were never reported, according to police and residents.

In late June, Criswell and two other teens allegedly beat an 18-year-old during a festival in downtown St. Johns, according to the boy’s mother, Esperanza Trujillo.

Trujillo said the attack, which caused deep lacerations to her son’s forehead, was unprovoked. She said she called the city’s non-emergency number after the encounter but never filed a formal police report.

Police said they are investigating a physical altercation Sept. 5 at the Diamond Nails Salon on North Lombard Street involving a group of teens.

According to witnesses and a video provided to The Oregonian/OregonLive, it appears that Woodruff and two girls violently clashed with the salon’s owners as they left the shop without paying.

“These kids were crying out for help for months and months,” Trujillo said. “Nobody heard them.”

‘LIKE A TEENAGE CLUBHOUSE’

All the while the group of teens filtered in and out of a blue four-bedroom bungalow on North Portsmouth Avenue near Willis Boulevard.

People living within blocks of the home knew it well. They said they saw fights there. They heard screams. The presence of a police cruiser outside the home was not uncommon, neighbors said.

There always seemed to be a group of boys and girls hanging out on the rickety porch or front yard.

Woodruff lived there with his mother, grandmother, aunt, another man and five siblings, according to neighbors. Other teens would cycle through for weeks or months at a time, they said.

Neighbors believe that Rand was staying there as well as Criswell, whose family owns a home about two miles away on North Chicago Avenue in St. Johns. Criswell’s mother, Jennifer Criswell, declined to comment Friday.

For many, it appeared that no adults were looking after these kids.

“It was like a teenage clubhouse,” said Lucinda Bowman, who lives two blocks away.

Bowman got to know Woodruff somewhat after she said he and another neighborhood boy broke into her home in July 2018 and she went to the bungalow asking for her belongings back.

Over the next couple of months, Woodruff slowly returned her Xbox, iPad and Kindle, Bowman said.

Neither Woodruff’s mother nor grandmother responded to a request for comment.

Robert Teeter, the house’s owner, said he began renting to Woodruff’s family three years ago. On multiple occasions, Teeter said, someone in the home has smashed out windows and punched holes in the walls.

He said police had been called to the home 26 times since 2016.

“They’re punks, that’s all there is to it,” Teeter said. “I’ve had nothing but trouble.”

‘YOU COULD END SOMEBODY’S LIFE’

That trouble, meanwhile, continued to fan across the neighborhoods as it neared the end of summer.

Edmund Knowles said he called police Sept. 2 to report that at least two people had broken into his home on North Central Street earlier that day and made off with a number of personal items. Among them, he said, was a 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun.

The next day, in an unrelated incident, a teen was shot through the ankle with a 9mm handgun in nearby Pier Park, court documents allege.

Police later arrested the suspected shooter, Liam Geoffrey Yahn, 17, who faces charges of second-degree assault, a Measure 11 crime, and two counts of unlawful use of a weapon with a firearm.

Both Yahn and the wounded teenager are members of the group of boys and girls that includes Criswell, Woodruff and Rand, said a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation. Criswell and Yahn also appear together in photographs published on Facebook.

It was six weeks later, on Oct. 13, that things began to come to a head.

Anna Cools was at home with her husband around 2:15 p.m. when she said she watched a teenage boy open the Volvo station wagon in her North Central Street driveway and begin urinating inside it.

Cools said the boy, whom she identified as Woodruff, then ran off to join a group of three other boys and three girls down the block.

She and her husband followed them and called the police, Cools said. During that time, one of the boys swiped a skateboard off another neighbor’s front porch, she said.

About 30 minutes later, witnesses told police they watched three teens beat a man bloody and break his nose with a skateboard in St. Johns Square after he refused to buy them liquor.

“They were brutally attacking this man,” said Narangkar Glover, one of the people who called 911. “You could end somebody’s life with a skateboard.”

Then, around 6 p.m., a surveillance camera outside of Danielle Martinot’s home captured what appeared to be three boys walking in the area. One them threw a rock through her living room window, the video shows.

Sometime that evening, according to prosecutors, Criswell, Rand and Woodruff went back to Woodruff’s house to plan a neighborhood break-in.

“THEY’VE BEEN LET DOWN BY EVERYBODY”

Armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and wearing Halloween masks, the teens tried to rob a house in the 10200 block of North Midway Avenue around 3:45 a.m. Oct. 14 but were scared away by someone living there, according to a probable cause affidavit.

They then walked a mile over to North Mohawk Avenue and ran into Malone, court documents allege. The teens later told police they knew Malone from the neighborhood.

Criswell pointed the shotgun at the can collector and demanded that he let them take his blue Toyota Avalon, which was idling nearby, prosecutors allege.

The teen fired one round into Malone’s chest after he refused, according to the affidavit.

Rand hopped into Malone’s Toyota, and the three teens spent the next few hours cruising about the neighborhood before ditching the stolen car, according to prosecutors.

During the ride the teens stopped for a bite to eat at a Taco Bell drive-thru.

A receipt for the fast-food run was left inside Malone’s car, which prosecutors said was recovered along North Hodge Avenue near Cesar Chavez School — two blocks from Woodruff’s home.

A homeowner on North Allegheny Avenue, just several blocks from the shooting, later found the shotgun in some of his shrubs, court documents state.

Knowles, who was burglarized in September, said police later told him that the shotgun was the one he reported stolen from his home.

“I’m really sorry that my gun was used to murder a man,” Knowles told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Woodruff allegedly kept going, records show.

Police arrested him and two other teens the next day in a burglary in the 6600 block of North Yale Street.

One of the other teens with Woodruff was the same boy shot in the ankle at Pier Park weeks before, police officers told neighbors.

Woodruff was released from juvenile detention two days later, on Oct. 17, and required to wear an ankle monitor, according to the neighbors who spoke with officers.

Police returned to Woodruff’s house a week later to arrest him, Criswell and Rand.

“I feel like they’ve been let down by everybody,” Cools said. “And the neighborhood has been let down by everybody as well.”

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh; 503-294-763; skavanaugh@oregonian.com

-- Emily Goodykoontz; 503-221-6652; egoodykoontz@oregonian.com;

Follow on Twitter @shanedkavanaugh @sharkasaurusx