Schizophrenic man, 49, is charged with randomly shooting dead three strangers – one in each month of this year – and attempting to murder two others in Portland
- Joseph Kelly Banks, 49, was charged with three murders in a Monday indictment
- Victims were allegedly randomly targeted in three separate incidents
- Banks lived in a group home and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia
- He was previously charged in two non-fatal shootings on February 28
A man with a history of schizophrenia has been charged with killing random strangers in three separate shootings in each month of this year in Oregon.
Joseph Kelly Banks, 49, was charged in a 15-count indictment on Monday with the murders of Isaiah Hurst, Jeff Ramirez, and Mark Johnson in Portland.
The killings, which respectively occurred in the first several days of January, February, and March, appear to be random, and court documents do not suggest a motive in the case.
Banks had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder and was living in a group home for adults with mental illness, according to The Oregonian.
On January 2, 39-year-old Isaiah Hurst was found shot dead in the driver’s seat of a sedan that had crashed on the 100 block of North Morgan Street at about 9am
On February 2, 35-year-old Jeff Ramirez was fatally shot inside his pickup truck on Southeast Start Street shortly before 4pm
Banks was initially arrested and charged with two-nonfatal shootings that occurred just a few minutes apart on February 28.
Police say that ballistic matches and other evidence later linked him to a string of fatal shootings that unfolded over the first three months of 2022.
On January 2, 39-year-old Hurst was found shot dead in the driver’s seat of a sedan that had crashed on the 100 block of North Morgan Street at about 9am.
On February 2, 35-year-old Ramirez was fatally shot inside his pickup truck on Southeast Start Street shortly before 4pm.
On March 1, 55-year-old Johnson was found dead next to his SUV on North Stanton Street shortly after noon.
Banks was arrested March 2 and booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center, where he remains held without bond.
On March 1, 55-year-old Mark Johnson was found dead next to his SUV on North Stanton Street shortly after noon
Banks was arraigned on the new indictment on Tuesday. He is charged with three counts of second-degree murder with a firearm.
He is also charged with attempted murder with a firearm, first-degree assault, second-degree assault and unlawful use of a firearm for each of the people he’s accused of wounding who survived.
His attorney has entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.
In 2007, Banks was found not guilty by reason of insanity for illegal possession of a firearm by a felon.
He spent at least a decade in federal custody under psychiatric care, much of it at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina.
Banks was released to a halfway house on a February 2021 court order after a judge found that his condition had improved and could be managed with medication.
He is next due in court on May 9.
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