Portland had itself quite a Saturday night. What started as an illegal street takeover involving roughly 100 people at a Northeast Portland intersection spiraled into a multisite cat-and-mouse chase, a foot pursuit, and an aerial manhunt that finally ended with a Eugene man in handcuffs and his BMW on a tow truck.
Spencer Robert Rhoden, 29, now faces charges of reckless driving along with two separate counts of attempting to elude police, once behind the wheel and once on his own two feet. It was, to put it mildly, a busy evening for everyone involved. Rhoden was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center, which is probably not how he imagined the night ending when he pointed his car toward Portland.
The chaos kicked off around 11:30 p.m. Saturday when a large crowd converged on the intersection of Northeast 158th Avenue and Airport Way, blocking the road to hold what police described as an illegal street-racing event. Officers moved in and broke it up, but the crowd simply regrouped. That is the frustrating reality Portland law enforcement has been dealing with for years: disperse one takeover, and another one pops up blocks away like a game of automotive whack-a-mole…