'I thought he was on his way to kill people': Police actions before applying for arrest warrants are the focus of Garner motion hearing

(Update: Video will be added)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) — A five-day pretrial hearing began Tuesday on motions against a Portland man accused of plotting a mass shooting at a climbing event at Smith Rock State Park last October. Samson Garner's defense attorney sought to exclude evidence he said was obtained illegally while prosecutors began laying out their defense of the case.

Samson Zebturiah Garner, 40, was brought into the courtroom by defense attorneys and seated for the hearing. The hearing was delayed for about an hour after defense attorney Joel Wirtz objected to Garner appearing in court wearing the “highly visible” handcuffs and leg shackles he was placed in Tuesday morning.

Deschutes County District Judge Allison Emerson reviewed a jail report on restraint factors and found he was wearing civilian clothes, but Wirtz said the additional restraints “impede my clients' right to a fair and impartial trial.”

Emerson said Garner appeared to have no behavioral issues and ordered him to wear only leg braces like the ones he wore in court once before. Garner was sent back to jail because of these changes.

Wirtz also denied Deschutes County Sheriff's Detective Benjamin Geist's presence in the courtroom to assist the prosecution during the preliminary hearing, as he is one of the witnesses who will be called. Emerson agreed to exclude all other witnesses from the courtroom and instructed them not to discuss their statements with others.

However, she allowed Geist to be present and take on the role requested by the prosecution, noting: “The facts of this case are complex. There are many parties involved.”

Garner faces more than two dozen charges, including attempted first-degree murder with multiple victims, attempted assault and unlawful use of a weapon. His seven-day trial is scheduled to begin in late October. The judge in June rejected defense requests to drop the charges or to disqualify the prosecution from the trial.

At the start of the hearing, Wirtz again claimed that the search warrant affidavits were “inaccurate and untrue.” But the judge denied that motion to challenge, saying she had reviewed the motions and warrants and found that the defense had not met the burden of proving the motions were untrue.

The defense attorney drew a timeline on an easel to prove that the searches and actions without a search warrant were illegal. He claimed that Portland police had more than enough time and there was “no reason why they shouldn't have issued a search warrant.” He pointed out that Garner was under 24/7 surveillance, including with a night-vision video camera.

“Our position, based on both the federal Constitution and relatively new state case law, is that this is beyond the scope of what is permissible without a warrant,” Wirtz said, as he seeks to exclude a large amount of material from the trial.

Assistant District Attorney Mary Anderson said the state will show there was probable cause and “urgent” circumstances and “life-saving issues” for law enforcement's actions, including pinging Garner's cellphone without first seeking a search warrant from a court because he had left his home and threatened to shoot at Smith Rock in emails to friends.

The first prosecution witness was Deschutes County Sheriff's Detective Clint Baltzor, whom Anderson walked through his extensive background, including training for SWAT teams and sniper teams, as well as knowledge of bulletproof vests and how to quickly obtain warrants and cell phone pings when needed.

For example, Baltzor noted that cell phone pings often cannot provide precise locations. “So a ping alone does not mean you can locate someone quickly. Sometimes it takes a while.” He said law enforcement had to act on knowledge of Garner's comments, starting with initial information he received about an “individual who had threatened to shoot at Smith Rock State Park at the annual Craggin' Classic event.”

Garner's departure from home after weeks of staying at home and avoiding contact with others resulted in him “evolving from a possible, potential threat to an active threat,” Baltzor said, citing information from multiple sources.

For example, he said a friend received a text message that “contained some statements about the blood of the infidels being shed,” as well as suicidal thoughts, saying he wanted to “go to the mountains and blow his head off with a shotgun before he could hurt anyone else.”

“When he left home and we know he was gone long enough to bridge the travel time here,” Baltzor said, they “had to implement a plan as quickly as possible to find and arrest him.”

When they learned that he had been away from home for over ten hours, the detective thought, “Uh oh, he really has a big head start.”

Sheriff's Detective David Turkington spent much of the afternoon testifying about his background, the same sequence of events and the expedited actions of law enforcement when they learned on Oct. 19, the day before the Smith Rock incident, that Garner had left his Portland home about 13 hours earlier.

“I thought he was on his way to killing people,” Turkington said. “That was the least I thought. … I thought we didn't have time for a search warrant, given how much of a head start he had … Now we had an imminent threat.”

He said that when you fill out a search warrant form, you get put in a queue.

“This guy could be in our county and could be committing or have committed a mass casualty incident right now. I don't have time for this form.” So Turkington called a Verizon number and asked for help pinging Garner's phone. He immediately received the fastest location he could remember, to an area along Cline Falls Highway, where he was found at a campground near the Masten Trailhead and arrested.

Waiting, he said, was not an option.

“Even if we got a signal from the top of Smith Rock, it would take almost a gunshot to locate him. … You would almost have to wait until someone was shot or killed to find him, and that's not acceptable,” Turkington said.

Turkington also said that based on the information available and his experience and training, he believed Garner met the three requirements for probable cause: intent, means and opportunity to carry out what he said he would do at Smith Rock.

The investigator spoke of other disturbing emails and text messages, such as a statement from Garner to a friend in which he said: “The only thing I regret is that I did not cut off your head in front of your wife.” This was an indication of “evil… This is not just violence.”

Wirtz asked both detectives what it was like when Garner was found at the campground 20 miles southwest of Smith Rock, sitting in flip-flops, drinking a beer and listening to music on his iPhone.

But Turkington told District Attorney Stacy Neil that this did not change his view of probable cause for an arrest on charges of threat, attempted assault and even attempted murder.

“No,” said the detective. “Just because I interrupted him before he actually shot someone doesn't mean he wouldn't go out and shoot someone.”