Portland Felon Fires Assault Rifle Rounds Into Apartment Below, Heads Back to Prison

A Portland man with a violent criminal history, Paul Kurt Mitchell, 41, was sentenced to two years three months in prison on Monday after firing a Romanian WASR-10/63 semi-automatic assault rifle into the floor of his North Portland apartment on May 12 last year, spraying bullets into an occupied family unit below him.

Portland Man Back To Prison After Police Standoff For Rounds Fired From An Assault Rifle

Responding to reports of shots fired from a second-floor unit at an apartment complex at 5875 N. Fessenden St. in May 2024, Portland police were confronted by Mitchell shouting at them from his window.

He denied any shooting had occurred and told officers he wasn’t going to let them inside. According to police, he said something to the effect of ‘bring the tanks.’ Mitchell surrendered over an hour later.

The people in the apartment directly below Mitchell said that while they were in their living room with their two children, they heard gunshots and saw two bullet holes appear in their ceiling.

They told police they didn’t know Mitchell and hadn’t had any contact with him in the past.

They also testified that, earlier in the day, they heard Mitchell screaming and yelling and moving objects around in his unit.

Police seized the assault rifle and its magazine from Mitchell’s closet, and bullet fragments were recovered from the living room carpet in the lower-level apartment.

Police confirmed that two bullets had pierced the floor of Mitchell’s apartment and the ceiling of the living room in the apartment below.

Mitchell pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a gun. On sentencing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicole Bockelman set out Mitchell’s violent criminal history and his brazen use of firearms when prohibited from having any.

Mitchell has prior convictions for attempted murder and second-degree robbery and was prohibited from possessing a gun when he fired the rifle.

He was convicted of second-degree robbery in 2002, attempted murder with a firearm in February 2010 (and sentenced to seven and a half years), and being a felon with a gun in 2018.

However, he filed a petition in Multnomah County Circuit Court seeking to set aside his felon-in-possession-of-a-gun conviction last June.