By Maxine Bernstein
oregonlive.com
SALEM, Ore. — Thirty-six seconds after a state police trooper stepped from his police SUV to confront a man armed with a knife, he fired a stun gun twice and then fired his handgun twice as the suspect walked off, killing the 22-year-old man at the National Guard Air Station.
A Marion County grand jury ruled that Senior Trooper Justin W. Oxenrider’s shooting last month of Matthew Walter Wong was legally justified.
The bullets hit Wong in the back and right arm, according to an autopsy, and he died at the scene.
The Marion County district attorney released the body camera footage that showed the trooper’s brief encounter with Wong that immediately turned confrontational and then deadly but urged the public “not to over-emphasize its weight, compared to all the evidence.”
Oxenrider, a 19-year department veteran, testified before the grand jury that he was not going to let Wong leave because he believed Wong was “a threat to anyone in the immediate area and for the public at large,” the Marion County District Attorney Paige Clarkson wrote in a memo announcing the grand jury’s decision.
The district attorney’s office didn’t release the grand jury transcripts but provided a summary of the evidence.
Police had been called about 10 a.m. on Feb. 27 to an attempted robbery at the National Guard Air Station off Turner Road in Salem. Oxenrider put himself on the call after hearing a dispatcher send another officer with an alert that a man was at the air station’s guard shack.
Wong had handed a guard a threatening note that offered two options. The first: Don’t call the cops, “Surrender. Lay down all your arms” and “put every arm” in a jeep. “Drive it out Leave keys in ignition.” Or option 2: “I kill everybody at this base. I’ll give you 10 mins to decide.”
Oxenrider, during his 3-mile route to the air station, had learned that the suspect had a warrant for his arrest and had pulled a knife on police at the air station last year and that they had used a Taser against him then.
When Oxenrider arrived at the guard shack, he did not wait for any other troopers to arrive before confronting Wong.
According to his body camera footage, Oxenrider drove up behind Wong as Wong sat on a stone bench away from the guard shack or anyone, with his back to the police car.
Oxenrider stepped out of his SUV and yelled, “Hey Partner! How you doin’?” the video shows.
Wong turned, stood up and began to walk away with his hands in his jacket pockets. Oxenrider, according to the body camera footage, told him: “Could you take your hands out of your pockets for me, please.”
Wong refused and instead told Oxenrider he would leave.
“No, you’re not leaving right now,” Oxenrider told him. “Hey, put your hands out of your pocket right now. Do you understand?”
As Wong held his hands up above his hand with the knife’s exposed blade in one hand, Oxenrider shouted, “Ya wanna get Tased?”
Oxenrider immediately fired his Taser at Wong but missed. Wong then cursed and charged at Oxenrider saying something unintelligible about a gun, according to the district attorney’s office.
Wong and the trooper got into a brief physical struggle, according to the district attorney’s office. Wong was holding his knife and swiped at the trooper while Oxenrider was still holding his Taser, the district attorney’s office said.
Oxenrider testified that he tried to throw Wong to the ground but was unsuccessful. Oxenrider fired his Taser a second time, but the probes didn’t make sufficient contact with Wong and had no effect, according to the district attorney’s office.
Wong walked away onto grass between the entry driveway and Turner Road . Oxenrider followed on foot alongside Wong.
Oxenrider testified that he saw Wong turn back in his direction with the knife in his hand “in what he felt was an aggressive manner,” the district attorney’s office said.
“Senior Trooper Oxenrider compared Wong’s look or movement to that which Wong used immediately prior to Wong’s previous charge,” the office’s memo said.
But Wong didn’t charge at Oxenrider, and continued to walk away from the trooper when he was shot and killed, according to the body camera footage.
One shot struck Wong in the back, on his right side, and exited from the upper left part of his chest. The second bullet entered and exited Wong’s right arm then entered the right side of his chest and exited the left side of his chest, according to an autopsy.
The Marion County District Attorney’s office said seven seconds elapsed between Wong’s first charge at Oxenrider with the knife and the trooper’s firing of two gunshots.
At the time, an active warrant was out for Wong’s arrest on a charge of unlawful use of a weapon.
On March 7 of last year, Wong had entered the guard station armed with a knife and demanding to speak with Gov. Tina Kotek about child sex trafficking, according to the district attorney’s office.
He threatened to stab police if they arrested him, according to the district attorney’s office. In that encounter, state troopers fired Tasers four times at Wong, but none were successful due to his thick clothing, the district attorney’s office said.
The responding trooper wrote in a report after that encounter that Wong “nearly forced a use of deadly force incident.”
The grand jury reviewing Wong’s fatal shooting was not told the details of the prior encounter with state police.
Instead, the grand jury heard from a police expert on “human dynamics” who testified about the time it takes for someone to “process a stimulus, decide to respond and then physically execute that response,” according to the district attorney’s release.
The district attorney’s office did not identify the expert in its release but on Monday told The Oregonian /OregonLive it was Craig Allen from the Minnesota based company Force Science, which has drawn sustained criticism over the years, including a scathing putdown by a federal judge in California .
“The Grand Jury further found that all reasonable alternatives, such as verbal de-escalation, waiting, or using other available techniques or resources weren’t feasible,” the district attorney’s office said.
Oxenrider had provided Wong with “verbal and visual warnings, attempted less-than-lethal tools unsuccessfully twice, and provided him with a reasonable opportunity to comply,” the district attorney’s office said.
Clarkson said in a statement that Oxenrider “faced an untenable situation not of his own creation,” and that she was thankful Oxenrider “was there to protect our community that day.”
“I would like to thank the Grand Jury for their careful and thorough review of this dangerous situation,” Clarkson said. “It is tragic that Mr. Wong was experiencing mental health struggles, and this case highlights the dangerous outcomes for our neighbors, our law enforcement officers and our community when such issues go unaddressed.”
“I know that no one wanted this outcome on that day,” she said.
Clarkson said she met with Wong’s family after the grand jury issued its ruling Friday.
State police will now conduct an internal review of the shooting.
“Incidents involving the use of deadly physical force are traumatic and the loss of life is never a desired outcome,” said Capt. Kyle Kennedy, state police spokesperson. " The Oregon State Police is grateful no other community members or law enforcement personnel were physically injured during this event.”
It marked Oxenrider’s second fatal shooting.
In 2013, the Columbia County district attorney found Oxenrider’s earlier shooting justified. He had shot and killed a 27-year-old St. Helens man, Josiah Fischer, that year after a high-speed chase near Scappoose. The man had sped off when police attempted to stop him for speeding and drove into a ditch. When the motorist was ordered to show his hands and “displayed” a handgun, Oxenrider shot and killed the man, according to police. Another trooper at the scene did not fire any shots.
—
©2025 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit oregonlive.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.