By Everton Bailey Jr. and Aimee Green

Several shouting matches broke out as about 20 people gathered Tuesday outside the courtroom where the accused attacker of three good Samaritans on a MAX train faced a judge for the first time.

Angry shouts and expletives filtered into the second-floor courtroom at the end of the brief hearing for Jeremy Joseph Christian, 35, leading Multnomah County Circuit Court officials to lock down the courtroom as deputies cleared the crowd.

Many outside in the hallway had come to support Micah Fletcher, the only one of the three men stabbed to survive. Fletcher, a 21-year-old student at Portland State University, sat inside in the first row beside his father.

Fletcher, Rick Best, 53, of Happy Valley and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, of Southeast Portland all were stabbed in the neck as they tried to calm down Christian when he launched into a racist rant at two teenage girls, one wearing a hijab, police and witnesses said.

The group of supporters and others initially were taken aback that there was no space for them to watch the arraignment.

At one point, another man tried to get into the courtroom through the crowd, and the people sympathetically told him that the courtroom was full. When he said he was a friend of Christian's, the group turned on him.

They started to yell "Boo!" and "Get out!" That prompted the man to speed walk away, then stop to tie his shoelaces for a few minutes on a nearby bench as the group surrounded him.

Deputies had to separate the crowd from the man.

Some shouted: "Nazi" and "Facist Neo-Nazi" and pointed to the man's red shoelaces on his black boots as a symbol of what they said indicates support for white supremacy.

As nearby media cameras focused on the man, one supporter yelled: "Show the world what a hater looks like!"

The man said that wasn't true. A short while later, he said: "I'm not going to get into a debate with people. I know I'm a good person."

He was led down the stairs and outside the Justice Center by a deputy as people yelled from the top of the stairs that he should get out of Portland. Three people followed him to his bike, chained across the street.

He told a reporter with The Oregonian/OregonLive that he went to court to support Christian, a longtime friend.

"Wouldn't it make more sense to reject him as a friend?" one man asked him.

The man rode away on his bike and later said in a telephone interview that he went to court because he wanted Christian to know that "all his friends haven't abandoned him." They met at the Oregon State Penitentiary in 2002 but lost touch until they met again about eight months ago when Christian was selling comic books outside Powell's bookstore, he said.

He noticed that Christian in the last two weeks had become "amped up," but doesn't know why.

In the meantime inside the courthouse, more shouting broke out from the people in the hallway. The crowd erupted with yells of "Bigot!" and "Murderer!" during Christian's arraignment.

Deputies tried to quiet them but asked them to leave the Justice Center when they didn't stop. About half of them did.

The remaining ones stood their ground. Some of them said they're now afraid to ride the bus or MAX.

After the arraignment was over, Fletcher left the courthouse from a side door and walked briskly away.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey

-- Aimee Green

503-294-5119;