In the nightmare, Jeff Beck is pulling up again at the scene of his son’s shooting last month.
The first responder just ahead of him is running to the teenager, who lies crumpled by the back tire of his car.
Beck is careening forward, seeing the blood pouring from his son’s head, feeling the terror course through his veins again.
Then he wakes up.
He reminds himself that his son, 16-year-old Elliott Beck, is still alive and recovering from a gunshot wound to the head at Randall Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel.
The Roosevelt High School student can communicate with hand signals and by writing on a whiteboard.
He still has a tracheostomy tube.
Jeff Beck and his wife, Jennifer Beck, don’t know yet if he will walk, but he will live.
“The better he gets, the better we sleep,” Jeff Beck said.
“But we’re all still struggling.
That’s an image I’ll just never get from my mind, and it’s very difficult to just even think or talk about it right now.”
On March 21, after a string of homicides in the city, Portland Police Chief Bob Day vowed to make police more visible to stem the city’s “unacceptable” violence, especially among young people.
Many school districts in the area were just beginning their spring breaks.
But Day’s pledge wasn’t enough to prevent the shooting two days later in which one teenager allegedly pulled the trigger and another teenager lay nearly dying.
The Becks, who live in St. Johns, said they don’t own guns, and they don’t think teens should have access to them.
Neither does the mother of the 15-year-old arrested in connection with the shooting after police said he turned himself in four days later.
“I am not a parent that would ever accept guns or violence into my home,” said the mother, who asked that her name not be used.
“I’m the absolute opposite of that.
All I can think about is Elliott and his mother.”
After her son’s initial court hearing last month, she said did not know where her son would have gotten a weapon.
And she said she hoped that when they were ready, the Becks would reach out to her.
The Oregonian/OregonLive typically doesn’t name juveniles accused of crimes, but does in serious cases.
The teen, Devon Campbell-Williams Jr., was booked into the Donald E. Long Juvenile Detention Center on allegations of attempted murder, assault, robbery, two counts of unlawful use of a weapon and unlawful possession of a firearm.
Portland Police Bureau Spokesperson Terri Wallo Strauss said Monday the case remains open and that investigators are not releasing any additional information about the incident “in order to not jeopardize the legal proceedings.”
The parents of both teens said the two knew each other, though they weren’t close.
The call no parent wants
The Becks, both 49, grew up in Portland and met at what’s now McDaniel High School in Northeast Portland.
They say gun violence has long been present in North and Northeast Portland, but the frequency with which they now hear gunshots in St. Johns is unnerving, they said.
There were 45 shootings in St. Johns between February 2024 and February 2025, according to the Portland Police Bureau.
Five additional shootings occurred in the Cathedral Park neighborhood on the St. Johns border during the same period.
Two of those 50 were homicides and 10 resulted in non-fatal injuries.
Those numbers represent a decline from pandemic highs, but are still above the 2019 numbers.
“We’re so desensitized,” Jennifer Beck said.
That changed in the wee hours of March 23, when the couple got a call they say no parent should ever have to receive.
It was a family friend telling them Elliott had been shot near Cathedral Park and police were on their way.
Scrambling to pull on her clothes, Jennifer Beck, a nurse, remembers shouting at the phone, “Apply pressure!
Put pressure on the wound!”
Jeff Beck drove them “as quickly and safely as I could” to the park, arriving just as police did.
Moments later, an ambulance pulled up.
Elliott was quickly bundled inside and rushed to Randall Children’s Hospital.
At the hospital, his parents said, a surgeon told them Elliott had a 50-50 chance of survival.
In what they consider a miracle and a credit to the medical care he’s received, Elliott is now awake and making jokes with his family on his whiteboard, though he remembers little of what happened.
The Becks, who had thought Elliott was asleep in their house that night, learned only later that the teen had snuck out to drive around with friends.
Jeff Beck said he obviously wished his son hadn’t snuck out, but he sees the breach as a sort of teenage rite of passage that should not end in getting shot.
And they say the city must do more to stop the rise in gun violence affecting young people, including in their community of North Portland.
They’re especially adamant about the importance of free, safe places for teens to gather, like neighborhood community centers.
In 2023, the latest year for which complete data is available, 36 people between the ages of 15 and 24 were shot to death in Oregon, according to the Oregon Health Authority.
In 2017, the total for the same group was eight.
Hispanic and Black youth are disproportionately killed by gun violence.
In 2023, Black young people between the ages of 15 and 24 died in shootings at the rate of 82 per 100,000.
That year the toll included three young people shot and killed in North Portland on the first weekend of spring break, including a 17-year-old Franklin High School student and a 19-year-old Roosevelt student.
The rate for white youths killed in shootings was two per 100,000 in 2023, Oregon Health Authority statistics show.
Portland mayor’s response
The Becks reached out to Mayor Keith Wilson early in their son’s recovery and called on him to do something more to stem the violence that is stoking fear, injuring and sometimes killing young people in their neighborhood.
Wilson, who also grew up in North Portland and graduated from Roosevelt, responded quickly and spoke with the family.
According to both Wilson and the family, he said a significant part of his plan to reduce gun violence in the city was to end unsheltered homelessness, which he says takes far too much of the city’s time and resources.
Michael Johnson, a former gang member and decades-long advocate for reducing gun violence, said last month that he urged the 15-year-old to turn himself in.
Johnson, who lost his own son to gun violence in 2023, has led a mentoring service for young people, and is now working with the 15-year-old.
Johnson, speaking to journalists outside the courthouse after the teen’s hearing, also called for the city to invest more in youth intervention services.
“These are two teenagers who didn’t deserve to be in this position,” Johnson said.
“But today, teenagers carry guns and they’re scared of one another.”
Johnson said he believes in facing the consequences for one’s actions.
At the same time, he worries the alleged shooter could get lost in the prison system.
“We’re asking for the community to come together to be there for both parents and both sides to work together,” he said,
“because there are no sides when it comes down to the injury of both kids.”
Zane Sparling contributed reporting to this story.
Lillian Mongeau Hughes covers homelessness and mental health for The Oregonian.
Email her with tips or questions at [email protected].
Or follow her on Bluesky @lmonghughes.bsky.social or X at @lrmongeau.
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