Michael C. Ramirez, 19, drove along Southeast Reedway Street in the Lents neighborhood and slowed as people huddled near the body of a 44-year-old man found dead on the front lawn of a home.

“It’s 2019. We’re out here taking souls,’’ Ramirez allegedly bragged to his friends as he drove past, according to witness accounts provided to police.

Forty-two hours after that pre-dawn shooting on May 24, Ramirez is accused of firing a single bullet into the chest of another man, leaving him dead in a parking lot of the Springtree Apartments off Southeast 162nd Avenue about 8 p.m. on May 25.

The killings received little attention at the time, but court testimony, police reports and court records shed light on the violent spree – unusual in its back-to-back brazenness.

Police recovered six 9mm bullet casings from the Lents shooting that killed 44-year-old Sergey Peshkov. The bullets were fired from the same handgun as the single bullet casing found in the lot of the apartments where Lorenzo Gordon, 18, was shot once in the chest at close range, police said.

Ramirez shot Peshkov in the back of the head after Peshkov caught him and his friends breaking into cars in the neighborhood in the middle of the night, police and prosecutors said. Peshkov lived just around the corner from where he was found.

A petty disagreement led to Gordon’s killing, witnesses told police. Ramirez and Gordon had been quarrelling over a girl or arguing about who Gordon had given a ride to that night, they said.

Multnomah County deputy district attorney Kate Molina argued before a judge that prosecutors had strong evidence tying Ramirez to both killings: There were multiple witnesses to both killings. Surveillance video put Ramirez at both locations. Ballistics testing links the shell casings from both homicide scenes.

“After the murders, Mr. Ramirez bragged about them,” Molina said, and “asked his mother if she’d gotten rid of the gun.’’

‘THIS IS HOW YOU GET AWAY WITH MURDER’

Sergey Peshkov had left his home in the 5700 block of Southeast 103rd Avenue around 1:30 a.m. May 24. He was working on a used car and said he was going to meet someone nearby to get some old car parts.

He soon encountered five young people lurking around parked cars on Southeast Reedway Street.

Peshkov walked up to them and said it looked as if they were up to no good. He said if he caught them in any cars, he’d send them to the hospital and didn’t want to have to do that.

One of the teens made up a story and said they were trying to find a friend’s house. Peshkov gave the group directions and walked off, teens who were with Ramirez told police.

Still suspicious, Peshkov circled the block on foot and again saw the group loitering on Reedway Street. Ramirez had broken into a car and was inside it as the other four took off quickly, walking east, Ramirez’s friends told police.

Someone heard Peshkov say, “I told you guys not to do that stuff.’’

Ramirez got out of the car and came from behind Peshkov. He fired three shots, police said.

Peshkov stumbled into a front yard of a home and Ramirez followed, concerned he hadn’t killed Peshkov, police said. Peshkov collapsed in the yard. Ramirez fired three more shots into him and then ran off, police said.

Ramirez and his friends regrouped at a nearby 7-Eleven at Southeast Foster Street and 97th Avenue.

His friends, according to Portland homicide Detective Todd Gradwahl, told police they saw Ramirez place a handgun into the fanny pack he had slung around his shoulder.

According to his friends, Gradwahl said, Ramirez was high on methamphetamine and bragged, “I killed that … guy. This is how you get away with murder.”

Neighbors reported hearing two sets of gunshots on Reedway, with a slight pause between each set. The first 911 call came in at 1:53 a.m.

An East Precinct officer responded at 1:58 a.m. and looked for evidence of gunfire or a victim. Finding neither, the officer cleared the call about 15 minutes later, according to police records.

Later that morning, another 911 call came in at 7:38 a.m. A resident in the 10300 block of Reedway was leaving for work and discovered Peshkov’s body in his yard. Homicide detectives were paged to the scene, dispatch records show.

Peshkov, a father of four, had been shot six times. The shot to the back of his head killed him, according to the autopsy. He also was shot twice in the right arm, once in the lower right abdomen and right hip and one bullet struck the backpack he was wearing.

Police recovered shell casings by Peshkov’s body and by the sidewalk. He apparently had staggered behind a fence before collapsing and his body wasn’t readily visible from the street, police said.

As officers cordoned off the area and gathered evidence, Ramirez drove by with his friends in a white Chevy Malibu, telling them, “It’s 2019. We’re out here taking souls,’’ one of the friends told police, according to Gradwahl.

Other neighbors along Reedway that morning reported that their cars had been broken into. Either their belongings were missing from their cars or their ignitions had been tamped with, they reported.

Police obtained video surveillance from at least one home that caught Ramirez and his four friends walking up the street just before the shooting occurred, according to police and court testimony.

‘I WILL SMOKE YOU’

Homicide Detective Scott Broughton’s pager went off at 8:18 p.m. on May 25, summoning him to a fatal shooting at the Springtree Apartments at 650 S.E. 162nd Ave.

There, a man in his 20s lay dead in the parking lot. A white van was parked nearby, its engine running and its side sliding door open.

The 911 caller lived on the other side of the apartment complex’s fence, heard the shots, jumped over the fence and began chest compressions on the man before police arrived.

Police found one shell casing near the front passenger-side wheel of the van.

An autopsy showed Lorenzo Christopher Gordon, 18, had been shot once in the chest. A bullet was recovered from his back.

Police had surveillance video pulled from the area to review. Two days later, a witness contacted police and shared what happened, according to police and court reports.

Gordon, driving the white minivan, and Ramirez, driving a white pickup, had parked side-by-side in the parking lot. Gordon got out of the van and walked up to the driver’s side of Ramirez’s truck and they got into an argument.

Ramirez reportedly had a gun in his lap and told Gordon “to get out of his face … because at the end of the day I will smoke you,’’ a witness told police, according to Broughton.

“Mr. Ramirez pointed the gun at Mr. Gordon’s chest and just shot him, ‘’ Broughton testified at a bail hearing, based on his interviews with witnesses.

Gordon stumbled, clasping his chest and collapsed behind his van. Ramirez peeled out of the parking lot in the pickup, hitting the back of the van as he raced off, police said.

A forensic analysis of the shell casing found at the apartments showed it came from the same gun as the casings picked up less than two days earlier in the Peshkov killing, Detectives Broughton and Gradwahl said.

Again, Ramirez bragged to his friends he was going to get away with murder, several friends recounted later to police, according to court testimony.

The following night, May 26, Gresham police arrested Ramirez on a warrant for failing to appear on a reckless driving case, according to police.

Two nights later, Ramirez chatted with his mother from Inverness Jail via video.

Ramirez asked her, “Hey, did you throw that away?’’

He pretended to scratch his face by holding his left index finger to his nose and made a trigger-pulling motion with the finger, said Broughton, who watched the video.

“I’m figuring that out,’’ she said, according to Broughton’s testimony.

Police said they haven’t recovered the gun used in both killings.

A Multnomah County grand jury returned a four-count indictment against Ramirez in June charging him with two counts of murder and two counts of murder with a firearm. He has pleaded not guilty.

A trial is set for September. Court records indicate Ramirez may suffer from schizophrenia.

Gordon’s brother, Earlonte Harris, wrote on Facebook a short time after the indictment, “Glad my family and the other guys family can finally get justice.’’

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

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