Motorcyclist dies in NE Halsey Street crash

INCLUDES INVESTIGATION VIDEO | How this outer East Portland wreck occurred still hasn’t been revealed. However, the result was deadly …

In the Gateway district, both eastbound Halsey Street and westbound Weidler Street are closed as Portland Police Bureau officers investigate a crash.

Story and photos by David F. Ashton

The result of what appeared to be a near head-on collision between a Jeep SUV and a motorcycle, along NE Halsey Boulevard, just west of the Halsey/Weidler couplet “split” in the Hazelwood neighborhood, astonished all who saw it the evening of July 28.

Portland Police Bureau (PPB) officers were dispatched to the crash at 7:13 p.m.

The disabled Jeep SUV is stopped facing east on eastbound NE Halsey Street.

A worker and customers in the 7-Eleven store on NE Halsey Street at 114th Avenue told East Portland News that they’d heard the sound of a motorcycle “really winding it up”, as one man put it, as it raced westbound on Halsey.

Soon thereafter, all agreed they heard a concussive “thud” – followed by silence.

At first look, the crash scene was confounding.

Officers discuss among themselves their preliminary findings after the crash.

A white Jeep SUV, with driver’s-side front-end damage was stopped, facing eastbound on NE Halsey Street, at the curb – a half-block west of the convenience store – in front of the vacant lot where “Yaw’s Top Notch” drive-in had been located for decades.

Watch, as investigators look into this deadly crash in the Hazelwood neighborhood:

The deceased, covered by emergency medical responders, was lying in the road about a block west of the Jeep – also on NE Halsey Street, and well past the paved “gore point” where westbound Weidler Street veers off.

The motorcycle was several feet west of the deceased, also on Halsey Street.

This PPB Major Crash Team investigator examines evidence left behind at the scene.

“I didn’t see it, but I heard it,” a neighbor told us. “It looks like the ’cycle rider didn’t make the curve onto Weidler, and hit the SUV.”

Officially, the crash was logged at NE Halsey Street at 111th Avenue. “The motorcyclist was deceased at the scene; the SUV’s driver remained, and is cooperating with the investigation,” is all that was divulged by PPB officials.

PPB officials have yet to reveal the findings of their Traffic Division’s Major Crash Team investigators.

This motorcycle was destroyed in the impact.

We will update this article if, and/or when, additional information becomes available.

If you have information about this crash, and haven’t already spoken to police, e-mail crimetips@police.portlandoregon.gov and refer to Case No. 23-198077.

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