Portland police on Friday released investigation reports and 16 videos gathered as evidence in the April 7 fatal shooting of John A. Elifritz inside a Southeast Portland homeless shelter.

Videos came from at least four different cameras inside the shelter, from witnesses and surveillance cameras that captured part of Elifritz's alleged crime spree earlier that afternoon. Police posted their reports on the Police Bureau's website.

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A Multnomah County grand jury earlier this month found no criminal wrongdoing by police, who told investigators they acted in self-defense.

Police confronted Elifritz, a suspect in a carjacking, after he burst into the CityTeam Ministries on Southeast Grand Avenue armed with a knife just as an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting was about to start that Saturday night.

Men in the shelter were startled and quickly tried to move out of the way, saying the intruder was cutting himself and bleeding from the neck. They tried to corral him in a corner with chairs, according to a witness video provided to The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Police responded to the shelter at 7:58 p.m. Several officers congregated at the open door, guns drawn. Once other shelter residents scrambled to get out of the way, the officers entered, surrounded Elifritz and shouted at him to drop his knife.

Two Portland police officers first fired 40mm rubber rounds at him.

Police said Elifritz lunged at officers before five other Portland officers and one sheriff's deputy fired lethal shots, killing him. The shooting was reported at 8 p.m.

Police had encountered Elifritz, holding a knife to his throat, earlier in the afternoon but he backed away from them and they decided not to pursue him.

Soon after, Elifritz was suspected in an attempted carjacking and then a successful carjacking, a road-rage encounter and the crash of the stolen car before he entered the shelter.

By the time he was inside, emergency dispatchers and police had identified the man with the knife as Elifritz.

Earlier this week, his ex-wife Barbara Elifritz and their 12-year-old daughter Stormy filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Portland, the Portland officers and the Multnomah County sheriff's deputy involved. The federal suit alleges police used excessive force against Elifritz.

The first encounter police had with Elifritz that day came after he called 911 at 2:25 p.m. and reported that his family had been murdered. He gave the location as the 4400 block of Southeast 79th Avenue. The location, though, turned out to be a duplex under construction. A contractor there said a man fitting Elifritz's description had been outside, acting strangely. No one was found inside, and police confirmed Elifritz's family was safe.

East Precinct officers found Elifritz a short time later at Southeast 86th Avenue and Holgate Boulevard and tried to contact him, "but he backed away from them, retrieved a knife from his pocket and held it up to his throat,'' police spokesman Sgt. Chris Burley wrote in a news release.

Elifritz ran from officers and police decided not to go after him. As officers were still in the area, a man came up to them and reported that someone was waving a knife and had just tried to carjack him. The man didn't want to report the crime but wanted the officers to be aware, according to police.

At 4:37 p.m., a woman reported her 2003 silver Honda CRV had been stolen from her by force at Southeast 72nd Avenue and Foster Road. Elifritz, police said, had jumped into the passenger seat and wrestled the driver for control of the SUV. The woman's father, in a separate car behind her, helped his daughter get away from the suspect and Elifritz jumped into the driver's seat and drove off, police said.

Then about 7:30 p.m., Elifritz crashed the stolen Honda on Southeast Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Stark Street, ran from the SUV into Jackson's Gas Station convenience store, where a clerk told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he was rambling about suicide and murder while holding a knife to his own throat.

Someone at the gas station, less than a block from the CityTeam Ministries, called 911. Employees said the man who ran from the crashed car didn't have a shirt on and described him as 6-foot-4 and about 280 pounds.

"I just showed a picture of the suspect that we do have to an employee who saw him running from the car and confirmed he's indeed the same guy we're looking for,'' an officer radioed to dispatch from the gas station.

The dispatcher confirmed the name and put it out over the radio: "The suspect is going to be John Elifritz. ... A couple of calls earlier today he had a knife to his throat. He was ranting about his wife and daughter being murdered. We disengaged from that on East.''

The two officers who fired the rubber rounds at Elifritz are Richard Bailey and Justin Damerville. The others who shot lethal rounds are: Officers Kameron Fender, Alexandru Martiniuc, Bradley Nutting, Chad Phifer and Andrew Polas, and county Deputy Aaron Sieczkowski.

There were four cameras on the main floor of the shelter that caught the shooting and provide a more comprehensive picture of what occurred, said Mike Giering, the shelter's executive director who turned the videos over to police.

Elifritz struggled with methamphetamine abuse and had a criminal history that included multiple convictions for stealing cars.

Earlier this month, the Police Bureau invited outside trainers from the Police Executive Research Forum to instruct bureau trainers on how to teach patrol officers to de-escalate encounters with people who don't have guns but are armed with knives, bats or other objects.

Officers who slow down, collect as much information as possible, use distance and cover and spend time patiently communicating are likely to have a better outcome, said Tom Wilson, a retired patrol bureau chief from a Maryland police agency.

An internal police administrative investigation is continuing into the Elifritz shooting.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian