A Portland, Oregon man who acknowledged that he deliberately killed an African-American teenager after the two got into a physical alteration earlier this month in Gresham, Oregon is now known to have been involved with a white supremacist hate group according to Doug Brown’s report at the alternative weekly The Portland Mercury.
The white 38-year-old Portland man accused of murdering a 19-year-old African American man fleeing from him in Gresham earlier this month has tattoos indicating he's in "European Kindred," a white supremacist gang based in Oregon. The Mercury has also found several references he and his associates have made online backing up his connection to the group.
Convicted felon Russell Courtier and his girlfriend, 35-year-old Colleen Hunt, are accused of mowing down Larnell Bruce with their Jeep after Courtier and Bruce got in a fight on August 10 outside of a Gresham 7-Eleven store. Courtier and Hunt were officially indicted for murder on Friday and were arraigned this morning. According to a probable cause affidavit for Courtier and Hunt's arrest, Courtier admitted to a detective he intentionally chased down and hit Bruce with his car.
Courtier was out of prison on parole for a gun conviction when he killed Bruce, according to court records.
According to a 2010 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the “European Kindred” is a dangerous white supremacist gang that originated in Oregon but has begun to spread throughout the West Coast.
EK now has at least 300 confirmed members in the Oregon prison system plus another 100-125 members on the streets of Portland, as well as in other cities and towns in the region. While the Portland-area street division of the gang — by far its largest outside of prison — is somewhat in disarray after a series of recent arrests of leaders and high-ranking members, the gang overall is expanding beyond the state where it was born. Last year, EK chapters appeared within prisons in Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico, and a street crew sprang up and began recruiting skinheads in Orange County, Calif.
The Portland Mercury located the photos of Russell Courtier’s tattoos on his Facebook page along with other references that indicated his connection to the “European Kindred.”
The probable cause affidavit for Courtier and his girlfriend, Colleen Hunt (according to the probable cause affidavit, Hunt encouraged Courtier to run Mr. Bruce over with the car he was driving), can be found at the link.
Larnell Bruce died three days after the August 10 incident.
May he rest in peace.