Barney Lerten
(Update: First testimony, more from email to ex-girlfriend)
BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) – The attempted murder trial of a Portland man accused of plotting a mass shooting at a Smith Rock climbing event in 2023 began Wednesday with a prosecutor and defense lawyer painting sharply contrasting views of his actions and words in the days and weeks before his arrest.
Many of the facts are not in dispute – that Samson Garner, now 41, left his Portland home and headed to Central Oregon shortly before the Craggin’ Classic at Smith Rock, and that his departure was only learned hours later during a review of surveillance video, sparking an urgent and ultimately successful search by Deschutes County sheriff’s deputies.
Garner was arrested at a Maston Trailhead campsite north of Bend and was found with an AR-15 rifle, two handguns, ammunition and body armor in his vehicle.
In her opening statement, Deschutes County Deputy District Attorney Mary Anderson stepped through a timeline of worrisome emails and text messages to friends, who struggled with what to do but eventually contacted authorities about Garner’s disturbing remarks and comments in emails and text messages about both specific suicidal and homicidal actions he’d pondered.
“His thoughts of violence, his thoughts of vengeance, his reasons why, his justification, his grievances and his target selection,” Anderson said.
“Those who knew the defendant knew he was devolving,” she said. “He was not the same person they knew.” His divorce had been finalized and his ex-wife and children were now living in another state. The family home where he lived was to be sold, as part of the divorce settlement, and financial obligations were rising.
“He had found a connection,” Anderson said, “a brief romantic interest,” but it ended a few months later.
Both sides agreed that the weapons and related items he had were purchased legally, but emails and text messages to friends laid out specifics of possible actions in chilling detail.
“I fantasize daily about murder, death and vengeance,” he wrote, “using my resources, life experience and skills … to punish others with the same pain that I feel.”
The avid skier and rock climber mentioned two specific possible targets, and spoke of dreaming about going to Mount Hood Meadows on opening day, “filling the field around Mt. Hood Express with bodies.”
After getting an email about the upcoming Smith Rock Craggin’ Classic, he wrote of “how easy it would be to rampage through the park, shooting belayers and spectators while their climbers watched and lived the horror.”
But he also wrote of going to a scenic mountain viewpoint and “blowing off my head with a shotgun before harming anyone else.”
Worried friends debated and wrestled with what to do, but eventually went to Portland police with their concerns. They investigated, also conducting surveillance, and unable to make contact. Others were notified, including the manager of Smith Rock State Park, about the potential for trouble.
Police planned to intervene with an Extreme Risk Protection Order, but on Oct. 19, 2023 learned through a review of surveillance video that he had left his home hours earlier. They quickly informed Deschutes County sheriff’s investigators, who put together a quick tactical plan and were able to ping Garner’s phone at the trailhead, pinning in his vehicle and using a “flash bang” to disorient and arrest Garner.
As DCSO body-camera video shown to the jury helped show, Garner was seated in a folding chair, in shorts and flip-flops, drinking a beer, apparently back in the area to mountain bike for the second time in a week, according to defense attorney Joel Wirtz.
“Hands up! On the ground!” deputies could be heard saying on the video.
Anderson explained the charges, saying that Circuit Judge Alison Emerson will instruct them on how to weigh their decisions. But both attorneys pointed to the attempted murder charges, meaning that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Garner took a “substantial step” toward harming others – “more than mere preparation.”
Wirtz didn’t refute much of the state’s case and acknowledged that Garner’s situation “wasn’t ideal,” and that he had stopped hanging out with his friends in the months before his arrest. But he tried to point out that Garner also was living a fairly typical life that didn’t fit the mold of a person solely focused on hurting himself or others in violent fashion.
The defense attorney also called it “very, very important” to note that Garner’s campsite where he was arrested was a half-hour drive from Smith Rock, which he apparently had not visited since the previous April.
Wirtz pointed out that Garner’s ex-girlfriend, also a climber, was going to be at the Smith Rock event.
And he said Garner was in the process of getting new stereo equipment installed in his car, had booked two ski trips later in the year, in Wyoming and Idaho, and bought a new pair of skis in Portland earlier in the month. He said Garner had visited a couple of bars earlier in the month and traveled to the same Maston mountain bike trails area to ride in Central Oregon less than a week earlier.
Wirtz explained that he brought up such everyday actions to correct any “mistaken impression that he hadn’t left his house.”
The defense attorney said Garner also owned but didn’t bring two rifles with a much higher caliber that would have been more useful to commit such a mass shooting from a great distance away. He also left “a ton of ammunition,” a backpack and camouflage clothes at home.
Wirtz said there was no evidence found of planning and preparation for such an attack.
And then, he also stated the obvious.
“Nobody got shot,” he said. “No gun was fired. No gun was even pointed” at anyone.
When the testimony ends in a trial expected to take about three weeks, Wirtz told the jury, “I’ll ask you to say, ‘Hey, they haven’t proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt.'”
The first witness called by prosecutors as testimony began Wednesday afternoon was Deschutes County sheriff’s Sergeant David Turkington, part of the team of four that used an unmarked pickup to approach and take Garner into custody that day.
But in describing his role, such as filing for a search warrant for Garner’s vehicle, Anderson also had him read the whole lengthy Sept. 30, 2023 email Garner sent to his former girlfriend, Penny Knighten, that had much of the violent talk that’s the focus of the case against him.
He first told her he had left climbing gear on her front porch, and of how his dream of traveling with her to some of the world’s best climbing spots had fallen apart, and how he’d been unable to see his children for 14 months – and learned he would have to pay $6,000 a month in child support for 14 years.
“I’ve barely left my home in three months,” Garner wrote, adding at one point, “I will soon be gone.”
He talked of his violent father, who had beaten and left his mother in a coma, then killed his grandfather and “ate his brain.”
Garner spoke of his fantasized killings at Mt. Hood Meadows and Smith Rock, “killing people rock climbing” or the belayers and spectators, with the climbers “unable to help or do anything to save themselves or their friends.”
“My brain isn’t supposed to work this way,” he wrote. “I’m turning into my father. I have nothing to live for. I am broken.”
Turkington also characterized the weapons and gear found in Garner’s car as “very consistent with going to battle, going to war.” And later, speaking of the AR-15, he said, “If it was to shoot many people, I would choose this gun right here.”
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