Dozens of people crowded into a warehouse in Northwest Portland on Sunday to take home the supposedly free items including furniture advertised by a sign out front, but there was a catch — the sign wasn’t posted by the business owner, and the items inside weren’t free.
Carl Sciacchitano, who lives across the street from the warehouse on the corner of Northwest 25th Avenue and Vaughn Street, said that he and his wife first noticed the commotion around 9 a.m. on Sunday.
“Sunday morning was when things got kind of crazy,” he said. “I opened my garage and asked if people were selling stuff and a woman said, ‘No, it’s all free.’”
Portland Police Bureau spokesperson Mike Benner said in an email that the source of the confusion was a sign posted out front, allegedly by 51-year-old Shannon Clark, that asked for volunteers to distribute property to people in the neighborhood who wanted or needed it.
Police arrested Clark on suspicion of second-degree burglary, theft by deceiving and aggravated burglary, but prosecutors declined to file charges, according to PPB and court records. He was released from custody the same day.
Elizabeth Merah, spokesperson for the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office, said in an email Tuesday that the office had asked police for more information and that prosecutors may file charges later.
Court records show that Clark was convicted of second-degree burglary, criminal mischief in 2019; unlawful entrance into a vehicle and criminal mischief in 2018; and being a felon in possession of a firearm and DUII in 2014.
A representative of the business couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Before police arrived around 3 p.m., Sciacchitano said that one person had even brought a U-Haul to take items from the warehouse.
“It just got bigger and crazier,” he said.
Police estimate between 50 and 70 people crowded the warehouse when police arrived — and one witness told officers that they thought the inventory was free as part of a liquidation of the business, Benner said.
Benner added that police are still trying to find out how many items were taken from the warehouse, and by whom.
For Sciacchitano, the incident was inexplicable.
“Even now I’m trying to figure out how it makes any sense,” he said on Tuesday. “Orchestrating this crowdsourced looting seems like such a strange and elaborate thing for that guy to have done without it benefitting him.”
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