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A man wanted by police on sex-abuse and rape charges poured gasoline on a woman and tried to kill her last week, Multnomah County prosecutors allege.

Aubrey Ulysses Lewis, Jr., 35, has been charged with attempted murder, assaulting an officer and other charges, in addition to the five sexual-abuse charges and one rape charge he has pleaded not guilty to in a 2023 case that has stretched into its second year.

Court records show that Lewis, who is from Portland, has a “criminal sexual conduct” conviction in South Carolina that landed him on that state’s sex offender list and a sexually motivated coercion conviction in Nevada.

He was on probation from the Nevada case when he moved to Portland in 2021 with his then-girlfriend and her children. The release conditions forbade him from living in a house with minors, according to court records. Nonetheless, he lived in a house with a woman and her children, records show. She was a long-time partner, Lewis’s aunt, Ida Alexander, told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

In Portland, Lewis struggled to meet his probation requirements, which included going to court-ordered treatment. When his probation officer discovered he was living with children in 2022 he was told he had to move out, court records show.

Lewis also sometimes stayed at a house with a 20-year-old woman, the woman’s 13-year-old sister and their mother. Around mid-January 2023, according to court records, Lewis allegedly sexually abused the 13-year-old, offering her marijuana, and raped her.

The girl’s older sister gave birth to a baby with Lewis on Feb. 1, 2023. Five days later, Lewis’s probation officer came by the house and told the woman’s mother that Lewis was a sex offender, according to court records.

The mother didn’t know this and called her family together for a meeting the same day to tell them what she learned. Afterward, the woman’s 13-year-old daughter told her mother that Lewis had sexually assaulted her three times, court documents state. The woman called police and, following a three-month investigation, police requested a warrant for Lewis’s arrest.

But by the time the judge issued the warrant, Lewis had been transported back to Nevada, because he had violated his probation requirements, and had already been released from jail there. The Portland Police Bureau arranged to be on site when Lewis’s probation officer in Las Vegas was scheduled to meet with him May 30, 2023, according to court records.

When confronted by a Portland detective, he denied the girl’s accusations and, when told he was going to be arrested, said they would have to kill him and started “throwing himself into the window.” He had to be held down by multiple officers.

Records indicate he was held in Multnomah County jail until March 18, 2024, when prosecutors’ request to keep him in custody was denied and he posted 10% of $20,000 bail, records show. The home address he listed on the court documents, in Greenbriar Village apartments in Southwest Portland, was the same place he shared with the girlfriend with four children who moved to Portland with him in 2021.

Almost seven months later, in October, one of the four children told an Oregon Department of Human Services caseworker that Lewis was living in their home. After an investigation was launched, two of the childrens’ schools told the agency that Lewis was listed as their emergency contact.

“DHS is very concerned for the children’s safety,” a Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office deputy wrote in a court document asking a judge to order Lewis' arrest again.

The judge agreed, and a warrant was put out for Lewis’s arrest the same day, Oct. 17.

On Nov. 9, police responded to a 911 call that a woman was in a fight with a man and screaming at a house near Southeast Powell Boulevard and 119th Avenue. The officers who arrived at the scene talked to Lewis’s grandmother, who lives in Portland and said she had let him and the woman stay the night because they were homeless.

Lewis was gone by the time police got there, but his girlfriend was upstairs, according to court records. She told police that Lewis had poured gasoline on her and threatened to kill her but she managed to run into the house to get away from him.

Officers drove around the area until they found a man matching Lewis’ description in a Safeway parking lot. When they told Lewis he was under arrest, he started walking away and pouring gasoline on himself.

“Kill me,” he said repeatedly, then lit himself on fire.

Lewis eventually threw his burning jacket on the ground and ran off. Police found him on top of a building with a “gutter chain” wrapped around his neck. He surrendered, and police put him in the back of a patrol car, but he slipped his handcuffs and tried to harm himself.

Police said they had to cut the seatbelt and remove Lewis’ shoelaces. Lewis spat at officers and kicked an officer’s knee, according to court records.

Lewis’ aunt said her nephew had behavioral issues since he was a child, particularly since he was 15 years old.

Lewis’s father, also named Aubrey Ulysses Lewis, was convicted in Oregon of compelling prostitution in 1993, when he pleaded guilty to forcing a 17-year-old girl to have sex for money. He was convicted of sex abuse in 2000, also in Oregon, when he abused a girl under 18 who was “physically helpless,” records show. And he was convicted in Idaho in 2003 of sexual battery of a minor child, according to his record in Nevada’s sex offender registry.

©2024 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit oregonlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Oregon health officials confirmed on Friday that an Oregon resident had tested positive for H5N1, an avian influenza strain that’s spread rapidly among bird flocks.

This marks the state’s first human case of bird flu. The Oregon Health Authority said the case is linked to an outbreak in chickens at a commercial egg farm in Clackamas County last month.

The person experienced mild symptoms and has since recovered, according to Dr. Sarah Present, Clackamas County’s public health officer. The state said the person and others in their household have been prescribed antiviral medications “to minimize any risk of spread.”

Officials have not said where the individual resides or work, nor have they disclosed the egg facility’s location and name.

State health epidemiologists are working with local public health agencies to monitor people who had contact with infected birds at the facility, the health authority said, adding that there was no evidence of person-to-person transmission of the virus.

Dr. Dean Sidelinger, health officer and Oregon’s state epidemiologist, said in a statement that people most at risk of infection are those who have had “close or prolonged,” exposure to infected animals, or environments where they have been.

This case comes after several farm workers in southeastern Washington tested positive for H5N1 virus last month. Several of the workers spent time in Oregon while infected, health officials have said, but returned to Washington for monitoring once they’d tested positive.

Health officials advise the public to avoid contact with sick or dead birds or animals and not to consume unpasteurized or raw dairy products like milk or cheese.

©2024 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit oregonlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A Whitman County teenager was arrested Thursday after police say he made or helped make hoax phone calls to police departments across the country, including Lewiston, according to a Lewiston Police Department news release.

The 15-year-old Garfield boy, whose name was not released, was arrested on suspicion of accessory to false reports of explosives in public or private places, police said.

The investigation by Lewiston Police Det. Zach Thomas started June 19, when police received a call from a person claiming to have taken a 5-year-old child hostage at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center, police said. The caller said he was going to slit the 5-year-old's throat and shoot anyone who showed up.

The caller described the handgun and amount of ammunition he had with him, according to the release. About nine Lewiston police officers responded to the hospital and placed the building on lockdown while officers investigated the incident. The call was determined to be a hoax after a search of the facility.

The same phone number was used to call Lewiston police dispatch June 20.

This time, the caller said he had placed pressure cooker bombs outside the police department, according to police. The caller said he had an accomplice outside the department who would shoot the dispatcher who took the call and made a series of lewd comments to the dispatcher.

The police department received six phone calls from this number between June 19 and June 21.

Thomas identified the suspect through a series of search warrants for information from various electronic service providers, including Google, the release said.

Thomas learned the teen was involved in an online chat with another user and encouraged that user to make the calls to Lewiston police. The suspect also coached the other user in how to use a virtual private network to mask his location, police said.

Thomas's investigation indicated the 15-year-old called, or was an accomplice to,  "swatting calls" this year to the following police departments across the country: San Marcos (Texas), Moscow, Clarkston, Catskills (New York), Prineville (Oregon), Auburn Hills (Michigan), Orion Township (Mississippi), New Orleans, Chicago, New York, Houston, Honolulu and Irving (Texas).

The boy claimed in online chats he had engaged in this activity for years and even advertised to other users that he was willing to commit these acts for money, the release said.

Thomas also found evidence of digital tools, such as sound boards that play the sound of gunshots and screams  to make the calls seem real to dispatchers.

"It is difficult to calculate the amount of resources that were wasted by these calls, as well as impossible to quantify how the public's safety was jeopardized while law enforcement officers were unable to carry out their duties because they were responding to these hoaxes," the release said.

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     (c)2024 The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.)

     Visit The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.) at www.spokesman.com

     Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A California 18-year-old has pleaded to federal charges stemming from more than 375 false reports that threatened mass shootings at high schools — including several in Washington state, causing dozens of lockdowns and law enforcement responses.

One of the threats spurred a lockdown at Central Valley High School in Spokane Valley.

Alan W. Filion, 18, of Lancaster, California, pleaded guilty this week in U.S. District Court in Florida to four counts of interstate transmission of threats to injure after federal investigators linked him to hundreds of cases of hoax threats, known as swatting calls because of the tendency for the SWAT team to respond. One of those felony counts stems from threats made in Skagit County.

Filion was arrested earlier this year in California and was extradited to Florida. He faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $1 million, although first-time offenders rarely receive maximum sentences. Fillion's sentencing has been scheduled for Feb. 11 in Orlando.

According to court records, Filion turned school threats into an online business. He targeted schools, federal agents, members of Congress and a former U.S. president between August 2022 and January.

"He targeted religious institutions, high schools, colleges and universities, government officials, and numerous individuals across the United States," court documents state.

Filion used technology that allows him to make phone calls over the internet, and he used social media to "advertise his swatting-for-a-fee services."

Filion charged $40 for a gas leak threat that led to fire responses, $50 for a major police response to a house, and $75 for a bomb  or mass shooting threat that led to a school shutdown.

"All swats will be done ASAP or present time," Filion wrote, according to court records.

On Jan. 30, 2023, he wrote that he "used to do swattings for the power trip," but now he did them "for money and the power trip."

In response to the details provided by Filion, dozens of law enforcement agencies approached and sometimes entered the homes occupied by people he named  with their guns drawn, detaining  individuals in those homes until they could determine they were safe.

Filion bragged about those responses in online posts. He wrote that when he swats someone, he "usually get(s) the cops to drag the victim and their families out of the house cuff them and search the house for dead bodies," he wrote on Jan. 20, 2023.

He also wrote about how easy it was to get away with cybercrimes.

"Actually in some states bomb threats to schools are counted as terrorism," he wrote on March 18, 2023. "So I'm a terrorist."

To avoid detection, Filion used numerous social media and email accounts, and other text-to-speech programs to mask his voice.

Washington threats

According to the court records, Filion first set his sights on Washington in the fall of 2022, when he made eight threats to bomb, shoot or commit violence at a high school in Skagit County.

"In some of these threats, the defendant falsely identified Victim-2, a 17-year-old student at the high school, as the perpetrator of some of the violent acts," court records state.

On Oct. 10, 2022, Filion called the school claiming to be the student and threatened to arrive  with a handgun and an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

"I will kill as many kids as I can and then I will shoot myself," he said, according to  court records. "I have pipe bombs that I have placed in the bathrooms, ceiling tiles, and trashcans all around the school that are set to detonate right before class starts, killing everybody and collapsing the roof."

As a result, the school was locked down as law enforcement and a bomb squad arrived to sweep the campus, according to court records.  Filion repeated the threats over the following two days.

According to news reports made from that time, it appears those threats were made at Anacortes High School.

"In this threat, and others, the defendant singled out members of the LGBTQ community as the objects of his threats based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation," court documents state.

Filion apparently continued the threats in Anacortes in the spring of 2023.

On April 26, 2023, Filion called the local police department and identified himself by the name of a local student. He then demanded ransom and told a detective that he swatted for "fun" and for "political reasons" because he disliked the United States.

He claimed to have swatted in Chicago, Florida, Phoenix, Dallas, Salem and with the U.S. Capitol Police. He allegedly said he charged students  for swatting because he was raising money to purchase weapons, bullet-proof vests and "ammonium nitrate for an attack he planned to conduct on a business location in New York."

Then on May 10 and 11, 2023, Filion made at least 20 threatening calls to other public high schools in Washington.

On May 10, the Spokane County Sheriff's Office reported that threatening calls were made to Central Valley High School. Similar threats were made at high schools in Pullman and Davenport.

"In each call, he said that he was going to commit a mass shooting in the school and/or that he had planned bombs there," court records state. "On several of the calls he also said that he was going to kill police officers if they responded. He ended many of the calls with the sound of automatic gun fire."

Threats escalate

About the same time as the threats  came into Spokane-area high schools, Filion also sent threats to several Historically Black Colleges across the nation, documents said.

The next month, he made swatting threats to eight federal officials or their family members and one federal building.

"One of these officials was a member of United States Congress, several others were agency heads, and others were high-ranking federal law-enforcement officers located in Oklahoma, Texas and Pennsylvania," the court records state.

On July 10, 2023, Filion called in a threat to a local police department in Texas. He claimed to have killed his mother and threatened to kill any law enforcement officers who arrived to investigate.

Filion gave the address of the home where he claimed to have committed the killing. It was the home of a federal law enforcement agent.

Law enforcement and firefighters responded and began to surveil the house. A neighbor told the responders that the home belonged to a law enforcement agent.

That person "was home and invited a senior police officer to come inside his residence to confirm that no homicide had taken place," court records state.

Then later that year and into early this year, the swatting threats began to escalate.

"Some of the calls targeted religious institutions, public officials, family members of public officials and other prominent officials," court records state. "These included numbers members of Congress and their families, multiple cabinet-level executive branch officials, multiple heads of federal law enforcement agencies, a former President of the United States, and numerous elected and appointed state officials. Many of these calls involved threats to detonate explosives at the victim's home."

Filion began getting help, including using one man who had a foreign accent.

FBI visit

On July 15, 2023, agents with the FBI arrived at Filion's home in Lancaster, California, with search warrants based on online posts by Filion.

While agents searched the house, Filion and his father, who was not identified, agreed to an interview.

"The defendant falsely said that he did not know why his house was being searched and that he felt he was being targeted by envious classmates because he had graduated early from high school," court records state.

"The agents asked the defendant about his interest in a specific town in Washington, mentioning the swatting and bomb threats made to a local high school there, and the defendant falsely replied that he did not understand what the agents were taking about and that he did not know anything about it."

After that interview, Filion continued the online threats until he was arrested on Jan. 18 on state charges based on threats made against a religious institution in Sanford, Florida.

Federal prosecutors filed their own charges on Oct. 21, and Filion pleaded guilty earlier this week.

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     (c)2024 The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.)

     Visit The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.) at www.spokesman.com

     Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.