The family of a security guard who was shot and killed at a hospital in Portland, Oregon, sued the facility for $35 million on Tuesday, accusing it of negligence and failing to respond to the dangers that the gunman posed to hospital staff over multiple days.

In a wrongful death complaint filed Tuesday, the estate of Bobby Smallwood argued that Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center failed to enforce its policies against violence and weapons in the workplace by not barring the shooter from the facility, despite staff reporting threats and aggression toward them in the days before the shooting.

“The repeated failures of Legacy Good Samaritan to follow their own safety protocols directly led to the tragically preventable death of Bobby Smallwood,” Tom D’Amore, the attorney representing the family, said in a statement. “Despite documented threats and abusive behavior that required immediate removal under hospital policy, Legacy allowed a dangerous individual to remain on the premises for three days until those threats escalated to violence.”

In an email, Legacy Health said it was unable to comment on pending litigation.

The shooting at Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center in Portland was part of a wave of gun violence sweeping through U.S. hospitals and medical centers, which have struggled to adapt to the growing threats. Such attacks have helped make health care one of the nation’s most violent fields. Health care workers racked up 73% of all nonfatal workplace violence injuries in 2018, the most recent year for which figures are available, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The gunman at the Portland hospital, PoniaX Calles, first visited the facility on July 19, 2023, as his partner was about to give birth. On July 20 and July 21, nursing staff and security guards filed multiple incident reports describing outbursts, violent behavior and threats, but they weren’t accessible or provided to workers who were interacting with him, according to the complaint.

On July 22, nurse supervisors decided to remove Calles from his partner’s room, and Smallwood accompanied him to the waiting room area outside the maternity ward. Other security guards searching the room found two loaded firearms in a duffel bag, and his partner told them he likely had a third gun on his person, the complaint said.

According to the complaint, over 40 minutes passed between the discovery of the duffel bag and Smallwood’s death. Two minutes before he was shot, a security guard used hand gestures through glass doors to notify him that Calles was armed. Smallwood then told Calles he would pat him down, but Calles said he would leave instead. Smallwood began escorting him out of the hospital, and as other staff members approached them, Calles shot Smallwood in the neck.

The hospital did not call a “code silver,” the emergency code for an active shooter, until after Smallwood had been shot, the complaint said.

Smallwood’s family said his death has profoundly impacted them.

“Every day we grieve the loss of our son and all the years ahead that should have been his to live,” his parents, Walter “Bob” and Tammy Smallwood, said in the statement released by their attorney. “Nothing can bring Bobby back, but we will not stop fighting until Legacy is held fully responsible for what they took from our family.”

After the shooting, Legacy said it planned to install additional metal detectors; require bag searches at every hospital; equip more security officers with stun guns; and apply bullet-slowing film to some interior glass and at main entrances.

Around 40 states have passed laws creating or increasing penalties for violence against health care workers, according to the American Nurses Association. Hospitals have armed security officers with batons, stun guns or handguns, while some states allow hospitals to create their own police forces.

Layers of volcanic rock in eastern Oregon, the Willamette Valley and the Columbia Basin have created fertile soil for farming and ranching, but in the future it could provide fruitful ground for a whole other industry designed to fight climate change.

Oregon’s state geologist is pitching a novel idea of using the region’s rocky basalt layer – born of lava that flowed millions of years ago from cracks in the Earth’s crust –  to be a bank for storing planet-warming carbon dioxide.

Ruarri Day-Stirrat, state geologist and executive director of the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, discussed the potential for geologic carbon sequestration at a State Land Board meeting in Salem last month, and will seek funding to begin investigating potential sites in eastern Oregon. It involves using machines to capture carbon dioxide from the air or to capture it directly from a source like a big livestock operation or a factory, turning it into a solid mineral and storing it in rocky layers deep in the earth. The strategy is still a very new one, and so far not cost-effective or scalable in the fight against climate change. But places like Oregon, Washington and Iceland that have lots of volcanic rock are unique in their potential to store carbon deep underground.

“At the moment, it’s definitely in that seed idea,” Day-Stirrat told the Capital Chronicle. “We want to drill a stratigraphic test well to understand whether it’s even plausible – not even feasible – but plausible.”

At the encouragement of the State Land Board – which includes Gov. Tina Kotek, Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade and state Treasurer Tobias Read – he’ll present the idea to the state Legislature in January and start to raise funding.

There’s potential to store more than 14,000 megatons of carbon dioxide in the basalt beneath Oregon and Washington, according to a 2013 U.S. Geological Survey study. That’s equivalent to more than 200 years worth of carbon dioxide emissions from Oregonians and Oregon industry. In eastern Oregon, quite a bit of that rocky layer is deep beneath land owned by the state, which is where Day-Stirrat sees the greatest potential for development.

But it’s expensive to drill and develop a project, and could be counterintuitive to the mission of reducing pollution and slowing climate change if energy must be used to capture the carbon dioxide, mineralize it and to inject it into the ground. Modeling from the En-ROADS simulator developed by the nonprofit Climate Interactive and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows that direct carbon capture and storage is not the most effective way to spend money in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and it would be far more effective in the next 75 years to spend money to decarbonize the energy sector and to tax polluters. 

“We should be investigating a lot of different solutions. And yes, each project has more or less cost. And at the moment, we’re probably doing all the cheap ones, and they’re cheap for a reason,” Day-Stirrat said.

Northwest projects

Some direct air capture and geologic carbon storage projects are already underway. In the Dalles, Google is building its own $20 million direct carbon capture facility. The University of Wyoming is also running a test project near Hermiston, with more than $10 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to eventually capture carbon dioxide emissions from a natural gas plant, mineralize them and inject them into underground basalt. 

In those facilities, a chemical filter grabs or locks carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and holds onto it until it is isolated, turned to a solid and then injected into the earth.

Test projects are also happening in Washington, and a consortium that includes the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado-based climate nonprofit, and the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries is trying to create a direct carbon capture and storage hub in the Northwest.

To initiate a project in eastern Oregon, Day-Stirrat said his agency needs to be able to drill more than 3,500 feet beneath the ground to see how deep the water table is, where water flow zones are and if there are any plausible areas to store mineralized carbon and if it’s possible to get the mineralized carbon that deep. Standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency do not allow any geologic carbon sequestration to happen in an area where water could be compromised, Day-Stirrat said. 

“Direct air capture still has a ways to go. But there’s a lot of research and development money going into understanding the technology and what the scale up globally could look like,” he said. 

Day-Stirrat, 45, said he expects in his lifetime to see it used as a tool for reducing emissions and slowing the worst outcomes of climate change.

“I’d be disappointed if it doesn’t,” he said.

With three games left in the season, the 4-5 Oregon State State Beavers need to win two in order to reach the postseason. For now, Beavers’ head coach Trent Bray is keeping his team focused on the challenge that a trip to the Air Force Academy presents and what lessons there are to learn from last week’s loss to San Jose State.

Bray met with the media this week to discuss what’s ahead for OSU and how his younger players can continue to get better. Watch the full presser below.

NOTES

-Reviewing the San Jose State game: “After watching the film of the San Jose State game, it was a lot like I thought. I thought we moved the ball pretty well, but just stubbed our toe in the red zone. Four drives in the red zone and we only get three points out of them. That’s a problem so we got to
be better in the Red Zone. Would have changed that game. And same thing with the explosive plays over our head in the back end on defense we we can’t allow that to happen to play the way we want.”

-Ben Gulbranson will continue to be the starting quarterback, moving forward.

-On Salahadin Allah’s development: “As you go through the season you get more and more work and more and more reps in practice and in games. You become a better player…I thought he played well and had some really good runs and still had some runs that, you know, we need him to break that he could have. So I’m excited about where he’s at and his progression.”

-On the morale of the team currently after a 4-5 start: “You watch us practice and you wouldn’t know what our record is. Which is great to come to work with those guys every day. We are process oriented and getting those guys to buy into the results will come as we continue to do the right process. It’s frustrating right now and there’s some things that are painful but we stick to the process and we’ll continue to get better and in the long run it’ll help us.”

-On improvements to the run defense: “It’s more guys just getting better, more experience in the system. I think early on in the run game problems were a lot of misfit issues. I think the players have done a great job. Coaches have done a good job of of just continuing to coach those guys and they’re starting to figure it out and play faster because they they know how to play off the front and I think a lot of that showed up.”

-On defending a triple option offense: “If you’re going to take away the inside part of it, there’s always things out on the perimeter as well. And so there it creates one-on-one plays. Whenever you have one-on-one tackles that have to be made, you break a couple tackles, they make you miss, and it’s an explosive play. So that’s what these offenses do. They make it a one-on-one game for most of the game.”

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