Teddy Wayne Hall Sr. is accused of pulling a .22-caliber revolver from his pocket and fatally shooting an unarmed man who had told him he shouldn’t park in a space reserved for the disabled.
Hall fired four shots at Raja McCallister as McCallister stood beside the driver’s-side door of his black Camaro in the parking lot of his fiancé's apartment complex in Southeast Portland, according to police, a prosecutor and cellphone video of the encounter.
Two of the shots struck McCallister, 45, in the back as he turned to run, killing him on the evening of Nov. 23, Portland police Det. Scott Broughton testified in court Thursday.
“This all was precipitated over a parking spot,” Deputy District Aileen Santoyo told a Multnomah County judge during a bail hearing. “Mr. Hall shoots Mr. McCallister out of nowhere. … Just because someone tells you you can’t park somewhere, you can’t shoot them.”
As the prosecutor played a cellphone video that captured the brief exchange of words between McCallister and Hall, as well as the four loud gunshots that followed, a member of McCallister’s family sitting in the front row of the courtroom’s public gallery muttered, “Coward.”
Hall’s defense lawyer Drake S. Durham argued that Hall, 63, feared McCallister was going to retrieve a gun from his car and so shot him in self-defense, though Hall never saw McCallister holding a gun. Durham urged bail be set in the case.
Multnomah County Circuit Judge Benjamin Souede wasn’t swayed and ordered Hall held without bail. Hall has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, unlawful use of a firearm and being a felon in possession of a gun.
McCallister’s girlfriend Dawn Ebert, a resident of the Cora Apartments off Southeast Powell Boulevard and 37th Avenue, was with McCallister that night and witnessed the shooting. It was her cellphone video that captured the gunfire and was played in court.
She told police that earlier in the evening, McCallister had spoken with Hall about parking in the reserved space for the disabled. Hall said he would move his car, she recalled.
But about 30 minutes later, Hall and his girlfriend Juanita Nelson came back outside, and Nelson started shouting at McCallister and Ebert, who were talking to neighbors in the parking lot.
“I swear I’m going to put a bullet in your (expletive) head,” Nelson was heard on the video yelling at McCallister. Hall can be seen standing near Nelson, his right hand in his right front coat pocket, the prosecutor noted.
“Them two on the far right are handicapped parking,” McCallister told Hall, according to the video. Nelson continued yelling at him, claiming the landlord said “it was no problem,” the video revealed.
McCallister was standing by his parked car, looking away from Hall when Hall walked up to him, extended his arm and fired shot after shot, Det. Broughton said witnesses reported and the cellphone video confirmed.
McCallister ran off, hollering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” according to Santoyo, the prosecutor.
McCallister died in his fiancée’s arms.
After the shooting, Hall got in his car, pulled out of the contested parking space and drove off.
Nelson denied knowing Hall when police first interviewed her. Later, she acknowledged Hall sometimes stayed at her apartment, and she agreed to call him while detectives were at her apartment, Broughton testified.
In further calls with police, Hall agreed to surrender at the Safeway parking lot off Southeast Powell Boulevard and 39th Avenue. He told police he used a .22-caliber revolver but “threw it in some water,” Santoyo said.
Hall also told police he “unfortunately” fired the gun but was scared for his own life and wasn’t going to physically fight, citing various health concerns, according to court records and testimony.
Ebert has moved out of the apartment complex and is scared to return, particularly if Hall was to be allowed out of custody pending trial, her lawyer Jack Kinsey told the court. That night, Ebert thought Hall was going to continue shooting and harm her as well, her lawyer said.
McCallister’s family watched the video of the fatal shooting played in court and were disgusted by its senselessness.
“He killed my nephew, for what?” his aunt Charlene Menafee said.
The shooting just before Thanksgiving devastated the victim’s family. Relatives didn’t plan any family gatherings for either Thanksgiving or Christmas, Menafee said.
McCallister was a father of four children between the ages of 21 and 26. He was described as a man obsessed with cars, family-oriented, funny and charismatic with an infectious laugh.
“This loss has shattered us,” Krystal Ja, McCallister’s younger sister, told the judge in court. “We are definitely shaken to our core by the tragedy in this heinous act.”
Then, turning toward Hall, she added, “I just want to say that you won’t break me.”
Another member of the victim’s family who attended the court hearing was Perlia Bell, first cousin to McAllister’s mother, who lost her own daughter, Asia Bell, 24, in November 2002 in a high-profile Portland shooting. Asia Bell, a mother of four children, was gunned down on her porch.
“I’m proud of Raja for standing up for the handicapped,” his aunt Charlene Menafee said after the hearing. “But I just can’t understand why… why one man would take another man’s life for nothing.”
