‘The grief doesn’t go away’: Vancouver father mourned, Portland driver sentenced for fatal shooting

Geoffrey Hammond — the

ride-share driver who killed a man and wounded a bystander

in downtown Portland while overcome with paranoid rage — was sentenced Friday to life in prison with the chance of parole after 30 years.

Hammond, now 48, crossed his arms in apparent defiance as the children, wife and siblings of Ryan Martin described their loss in the Oct. 11, 2023 killing.

“I now see the bottom half of the world that’s always existed, that only grief opens your eyes to,” said the victim’s daughter, Emily Martin, 22. “The reality of it really is as bad as you think. There is no beauty here.”

Ryan Martin, 47, was trying to beat afternoon rush-hour traffic when he

exchanged a rude gesture

with Hammond, who was parked far from the curb, waiting for a fare outside the

Moxy Hotel on Southwest Alder Street.

Martin got out of his car as Hammond removed his handgun from a lockbox, chambered a round and then lowered his window before shooting Martin.

Martin, a master electrician, was traveling from his job at Nike to his daughter’s soccer game in Vancouver.

Lying wounded in the gutter, Martin raised his arms to show he was unarmed; Hammond tried to fire again repeatedly — but the gun

jammed

.

“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you in the head,” Hammond told the dying man, according to a later interview with detectives that was played in court during the trial.

Prosecutor Brad Kalbaugh said no reasonable person would have acted as Hammond did.

“This case wasn’t about road rage,” Kalbaugh said outside the courtroom. “This was about one person’s completely misguided and ridiculous belief that he needed to use deadly force.”

Samuel Gomez, a nonprofit leader who had just flown in from Arizona,

snapped photos with his cellphone

of the broad-daylight shooting. Hammond shot him once in the knee, then fired again and missed as he drove off.

“My life could have been taken from me,” Gomez said, addressing the packed courtroom remotely. “Ryan, he was an angel that day.”

Hammond was arrested after calling 911 from a nearby parking garage. His first trial

ended in a mistrial

in December 2024, after a lone juror was swayed by Hammond’s claims of

self defense

, but a

second Multnomah County jury convicted him

in April of second-degree murder and attempted murder.

Ryan Martin is shown here in an undated family photo.

PPB

Hammond and Martin’s brief yet terrifying altercation was played endlessly in court, family members said, but much more was left unsaid.

On Friday, 18-year-old Katelyn Michaud said her step-father was defined by so much more than the “39 seconds of imperfectness” that came before his killing.

“People say time makes it better or easier, but the grief doesn’t go away, it just hits you different,” she told Circuit Judge Jenna Plank. “I will never forget the lengths he would go to, to make sure we were taken care of.”

His wife, Stephanie Martin, 46, said her husband had spread his love of music to all eight children in his blended family as a self-taught musician who kept nine guitars in the home. He was ready to fix anything, had coached sports teams and led youth activities at church. Martin grew up in the area and attended Prairie High School.

“He was the rock to our family,” she said. “Now I take his ring — that I placed on the happiest day of my life — from his lifeless hand and I wear it around my neck to try and have an ounce of him near my heart.”

Hammond was born under the name Geoffrey Mandalis in Chicago, where he was related to a politically connected family. He had styled himself as a crypto-currency influencer online, even as his finances spiraled and he lost his Southwest Hills neighborhood home to bankruptcy proceedings last year.

No supporters of Hammond were present in the courtroom. He declined to speak in court while planning an appeal.

—Zane Sparling covers breaking news and courts for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach him at 503-319-7083,


zsparling@oregonian.com


or


@pdxzane


.

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