A 40-year-old homeless man has been sentenced to up to 20 years of treatment and supervision by state psychiatric officials for attacking another man with a machete in front of the man’s wife and children on a Northwest Portland street.

The victim apparently angered Dameon Hoover-Rhodes after telling him not to sleep under an overhang of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 8 building at 2435 N.W. Front Avenue in January 2018, investigators said.

Dameon Hoover-Rhodes was arrested in January 2018 for attacking a man in front of his family. (Multnomah County Sheriff's Office)

Hoover-Rhodes was found to be guilty except for insanity for the attack that left Troy Mosteller with head injuries and broken bones in his arm from raising it up to protect his head from being struck again.

Mosteller, who was an employee at the building, encountered Hoover-Rhodes as he left work, authorities said. Mosteller then planned to get into his family car, where his wife and two children were waiting so they could all head to dinner, according to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office.

Hoover-Rhodes began to chase Mosteller and as Hoover-Rhodes struck him, Mosteller’s wife backed the car out of a parking space and followed with her headlights shining on the pair in an attempt to help her husband, according to the prosecutor’s office. Mosteller’s wife and children screamed for Hoover-Rhodes not to kill him, the prosecution said.

After Mosteller fell to the street, his wife jumped out of the car, confronted Hoover-Rhodes, threw her husband into the backseat and drove to the hospital, according to the prosecutor’s office. But Hoover-Rhodes was able to take one last swing at the car, breaking one of its windows, investigators said.

“The psychological trauma of witnessing your father being attacked and then having him thrown in the backseat of the car, covering the children in blood as their mother raced him to the hospital will be something these children will remember for the rest of their lives,” Deputy District Attorney Todd Jackson said in a statement.

At the time of Hoover-Rhodes’ arrest, he told jailers he has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder and previously had been treated at the Oregon State Hospital. He said he wasn’t taking medication, had been homeless for five months and was living off Social Security disability payments.

On Monday, Multnomah County Circuit Judge Benjamin Souede found Hoover-Rhodes guilty except for insanity of attempted murder and unlawful use of a weapon.

Souede sentenced Hoover-Rhodes to the supervision of the state’s Psychiatric Security Review Board for up to 20 years. It’s unclear if Hoover-Rhodes was sent directly to the Oregon State Hospital for treatment, but it’s common for defendants found guilty except for insanity of violent crimes to head directly there.

The prosecutor’s office said Mosteller and his family support Hoover-Rhodes’ sentence.

-- Aimee Green

agreen@oregonian.com

o_aimee

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