By Mark Kirchmeier
Arbor Lodge small business owner Evan Ross is 43 years old and hasn’t been in a fist fight since his teenage years, but he recently faced a surprise right hook to the face on his neighborhood street.
Ross and his girlfriend, Cat Hursh, had just watched the World Cup soccer championship July 19 at their family businesses, Bottles & Cans and Arborlook Food Courtyard, 5916 N Greeley Ave. They then began walking the few blocks to their nearby house. Hursh is just shy of nine months pregnant.
“Cat usually walks home alone, but thankfully I was with her that day,” Ross said, as he described what happened next.
“We went up Greeley and had just turned west onto Ainsworth, when this guy came around the corner, giving us the middle finger with both hands, and one hand had blood on it. I said to Cat, ‘let’s just let him pass us on the sidewalk.’ But the man closed in, and his punch with my arm, and pushed him back a few feet, and asked Cat to head to our house for safety.”
“I briefly thought that ‘this is the end of the fight,’ but then the guy pushed me into the street and we land on the pavement wrestling” in the middle of the busy Ainsworth and Greeley traffic intersection.
Ross, an athletic 6’4,” tried to break out of the fight, as cars and a TriMet bus approached them. The attacker then took off.
A bystander returned Ross’ eyeglasses that had been knocked off in the altercation. Ross saw the man run south on Greeley toward North Killingsworth Avenue, so he followed ½ block behind him. Ross then called the police who soon arrived and arrested the suspect.
District Attorney files charges
On July 16, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office filed an affidavit stating that Portland Police Bureau officer Berdahl arrived at 2:30 pm, July 15 as she responded to a call near North Willamette Boulevard and Villard Avenue and spoke to two ambulance workers who happened to be in the neighborhood and reported they came across the attacker, Robert Godinez, intoxicated and covered in blood and scrapes.
Berdahl said that Evan Ross approached and reported he had been walking with his pregnant girlfriend Catherine Hursh when Godinez lunged and swiped at Hursh.
Ross described how he intervened and ended up in a fight with Godinez who punched him, gouged his eye and threw him onto the pavement. Berdahl stated she observed that Ross had a bloody lip, a swollen purple eye, a facial scrape, a bruise on his right leg, and many scrapes across his back.” An affidavit filed by deputy District Attorney Alex Antonpoulos testified to the incident.
A separate Portland Police Bureau report included the same information and added that Hursh was uninjured. She expected to give birth to her child any day. Ross had a bruised eye and knuckle and scrapes his back from the street pavement.
The suspect, Roberto Xavier Godinez, 34, no address given, was charged with assault in the fourth degree, harassment and attempted harassment. Godinez was lodged in a Multnomah County jail and later released on July 17 on condition of making a July 23 court appearance.
After the incident, Ross said, “In Portland’s Chinatown where I used to have a business and served on the community association board, incidents like this would happen once a week, but it’s never happened in our five years living in North Portland.”
He praised the Portland Police Bureau’s quick response time. Most importantly, he concluded, “Usually when Cat leaves Bottles & Cans, she walks home by herself. Thankfully I was with her this time. It could have been a lot worse…if I hadn’t been there.”