A couple’s recent trip from Grand Rapids, Michigan, became a nightmare after reaching crime-ridden and Democrat-controlled Portland, Oregon.
Adrian Hammerle and Eleora Gouine were excited about the 2,300-mile journey to Portland, where Adrian previously lived for a few years, KATU reported Thursday.
They'd heard about Portland's crime issues but understood it's something all big cities are going through.
— KATU News (@KATUNews) October 6, 2023
This understanding changed after their windows were broken out and all their belongings were stolen two different times in a matter of days.https://t.co/JFSyKvKaAQ
Eleora said they knew about the crime plaguing the city but were not too worried about it. One day after settling into their Portland hotel, Adrian and Eleora found their car window had been smashed.
A Nintendo Switch video game was missing, but the couple’s camping equipment remained. To try and avoid a second instance, the two parked their car on the top floor of a different parking garage.
However, a few days later, the couple found the vehicle in even worse condition.
Adrian recalled:
So as I’m coming from the elevator and walking through the door and whatnot, I noticed the film that we put over to cover the broken window, initially, was cut through, and then as I was walking around the vehicle, just about every single window was shattered besides the windshield and our stuff that was in the vehicle, from her coloring books and stuff like that and pens, that are all just scattered all over the place and just about everything that we had in the vehicle, which is a little more than we had the first time we were broken into, because we’re about to leave. Just about everything was stolen.
The couple spoke with a parking garage worker, but the man laughed and said those things happen regularly, which did not give Adrian and Eleora an ounce of confidence.
“I’m not really sure where it’s gone. It’s gotten so bad, but it’s a lot different than what I’m used to, what I was used to,” Adrian said about Portland, adding he does not plan to visit ever again.
Social media users commenting on the image of the smashed window had a lot to say about the incidents, one person writing, “Why would they leave all their belongings in the car once, let alone twice?”
“Portland is a shithole!!” another user replied, while someone else said, “It’s because of allowing vagrant felons to pose as homeless and let them camp anywhere and do anything. City leaders are all woke idiots.”
In November, KPTV reported, “Thousands of property crimes in Portland are going unsolved, with no punishment for the criminals that commit them.”
It is important to note that families in Portland have reportedly been relocating due to rampant homelessness and crime, making life difficult, according to a Breitbart News article from August.
