UPDATED: Police Say Man Killed Sunday Night Brandished a "Starter Pistol"

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WinCo Foods on NE 122nd

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Last night, two East Precinct police officers pulled up to a man parked at the WinCo Foods on NE 122nd. All we know at this point is that shots were fired shortly after, and that Portland's now seen its second fatal officer-involved shooting of 2015.

Update 3:55 pm: Police have now added to the narrative of the shooting, though a lot of questions remain. They say two officers, Dominic Lovato and Michael Currier, killed 29-year-old Alan Lee Bellew after the man brandished a starter pistol that looked like a handgun.



Police say this is a replica of the gun Bellew pointed.

Police say officers Lovato and Currier saw Bellew and two others standing near the trunk of a car in the parking lot of WinCo Foods, 1950 NE 122nd, at around 11:35 pm. They'd been talking to the group for roughly ten minutes, police say, when Bellew "without provocation" pulled the gun from the vehicle and pointed it at the officers and his acquaintances.

Both officers shot at Bellew, the release says. He died almost immediately—officers called in "shots fired" at 11:46 pm last night, and Bellew was declared dead at 11:52.

Bellew was from the Eugene area, police say, and had an active warrant for failing to appear on a 2013 charge of heroin possession. He'd been convicted of fourth-degree assault and resisting arrest in a 2010 case.



Alan Lee Bellew

Police detained and interviewed the two people who'd been speaking to Bellew but let them go as witnesses. They haven't been named, and if there were drugs or other illicit material in the car, police aren't saying.

Meanwhile officers Lovato and Currier have kept relatively low profiles in their years on the force (eight years for Lovato, seven for Currier). The one exception: Currier was called out last year as one of 19 Portland Police Bureau employees who "liked" a controversial Facebook profile picture posted by Officer Rich Storm (and at least two other Portland cops). It showed a Portland police badge encircled by a rubber bracelet that read "I am Darren Wilson."

Wilson, of course, was the Ferguson, Mo., officer who shot unarmed black teen Michael Brown last year. The profile picture incident—coming, as it did, toward the height of national outcry over the shooting—enflamed activists in Portland, and led then-Chief Mike Reese to order the officers remove the picture from their profiles.

Lovato, meanwhile, shows up as being awarded a "Life Saving Medal" in 2013.

Original post:

Bellew's death is the first fatal shooting by police since late March, when police shot and tased an accused would-be burglar who'd lunged at them with a knife.

Another man, Michael Shawn Harrison, was shot by police in May, after charging officers with a knife. He survived, and has since been charged by a grand jury.