A top Portland City Hall staffer is on administrative leave amid revelations he took in a disabled homeless woman living outside and later abandoned her at a state park.
Councilor Jamie Dunphy placed Amani Kelekele, 35, on paid leave effective Monday, city spokesperson Alison Perkins said in an email.
The decision comes three days after The Oregonian/OregonLive published an investigation detailing Kelekele’s interactions with the woman, who uses a wheelchair and has a documented history of mental illness.
[Read the full investigation here.]
Dunphy declined to comment Monday on why he placed Kelekele on leave, saying that as a policy he does not speak on personnel matters.
Kelekele has served as a senior council aide to Dunphy since he took office in January and earns an annual salary of $131,000. He first informed his boss of the situation in late September.
On Sept. 25, Kelekele drove the woman and her dog out to Milo McIver State Park in the middle of the night and dropped them off at a campsite with blankets, a beach umbrella and assorted grocery bags, according to records reviewed by the news organization.
Days prior, Kelekele had scooped the woman off a Milwaukie street in an attempt to help her avoid arrest, he wrote in a memo to Dunphy obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive. He said he had let the woman stay at his home while he tried, unsuccessfully, to find her assistance she would accept.
Less than 36 hours after Kelekele left the woman at the campground, about 21 miles southeast of Portland, park workers asked state police to remove her.
She would not cooperate, records allege. Police used a taser to subdue, handcuff and arrest her on Sept. 27. The woman’s dog, a scrawny pit bull she described as an emotional support animal, bit a state trooper before it bolted into the woods and disappeared.
Despite Kelekele’s written account, police and social service outreach workers in Milwaukie said the woman was not about to be arrested. In fact, advocates trained to work directly with people experiencing homelessness and mental health crises had spent days attempting to get her help, according to interviews with The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Kelekele did not respond to a request for comment Monday. He previously declined to speak to the Oregonian/OregonLive during its reporting on the incident.
“This has caused a great deal of emotional distress,” Kelekele wrote in a statement last month. “I would like to clarify that I led with my heart in my sincere attempts to aid (the woman).
“However, if I could do it over, I would do it differently.”
Dunphy, in an interview last month, called the events “awful and heartbreaking.”
“This is obviously the worst-case scenario of how things could have turned out,” said Dunphy, who noted that Kelekele had also once been homeless and overcame other difficult circumstances. “It was done with the best of intentions and with some errors in judgment that, I think, come from a person who has an incredible lived experience that makes them want to try and be everything to everyone and be as helpful and as thorough in that help as possible.”
Attempts by The Oregonian/OregonLive to locate or speak to the woman were unsuccessful.
