A man wanted for allegedly destroying a roadside fruit stand last week and yelling racist insults at the woman running it died Wednesday in an apparent shootout with police in Lincoln County.
Authorities on Thursday identified the man as Daniel Edward Noonan, 49, and said state police and Newport police officers had planned to arrest him in a bias crime investigation when he “immediately engaged them in gunfire.”
Officers exchanged gunfire with Noonan, according to a statement by Lincoln City police, but investigators didn’t say how many officers fired or how many times. Noonan was declared dead at a nearby hospital.
The shootout happened on what appears to be Noonan’s property, according to public records.
Nearby resident Jenny Nelson said she went to the scene and saw Noonan being placed in an ambulance with his head wrapped in a white bandage.
A week earlier, Nelson had called 911 to report the first of two incidents that led to the bias crime investigation.
Nelson said she was driving by the fruit stand just before 9 a.m. last Thursday with her husband and spotted bags of oranges and boxes full of mangoes and strawberries tossed on the grass near the stand at U.S. 101 and Oregon 229 on the outskirts of Lincoln City.
The stand’s red tent was broken. The white table was tilted. A black jacket was on the ground and Reyna, as Nelson knows the stand operator, wasn’t there, she said. Reyna is an Indigenous Mayan woman.
“Our initial thought,” Nelson said, “was that maybe somebody had done a hit and run and left her.”
Reyna’s fruit stand was allegedly destroyed by a man who is alleged to have assaulted her and called her racists slurs.Jenny Nelson
Nelson said when she and her husband pulled over to look for Reyna, “all of a sudden, she came up from the lower end of the field up a walkway, and she was very shaken. I gave her a hug and just said, ‘You’re safe with us.’”
Because Reyna doesn’t speak English, Nelson used her Google translator to communicate with her before Nelson called one of her business’ employees to come help translate in Spanish.
Reyna indicated that the man, now identified as Noonan, pushed her, flipped her produce stand and broke her tent before grabbing the purse she carried as she tried to run away, according to Nelson.
Nelson, who had family visiting, left her employee with Reyna until officers arrived.
About two hours later, Darryl Blanchard also noticed the fruit stand was in a disarray when he passed by on his way to work.
He returned a short time later to what he called “chaos”: Noonan, riding a bicycle, had returned and was cursing at Reyna and accusing of her being in the U.S. illegally.
Blanchard stepped in: “You can’t do this. You can’t destroy it,” he told Noonan, according to a video taken at the scene and shared with The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Blanchard told Noonan to leave and then accused him of trying to harm Reyna’s husband who was filming the interaction as Noonan rode by on his bike and then toppled over.
“I watched you do it. You tried to run over him,” Blanchard is heard yelling on the video to Noonan, who responds by saying, “He got in my way. He’s in the highway” before picking up his bike and riding off.
The video shows that Noonan had a gun on his right hip but didn’t use it to menace Blanchard.
“He was uncalled for,” Blanchard said earlier this week. “People don’t need to act like that. That’s crazy.”
Right after Blanchard’s encounter with Noonan, Nelson returned to the stand to check on it and called 911 for the third time to report Noonan. She called 911 again a fourth time just before 12:30 p.m.
Oregon State Police confirmed earlier this week that they were investigating a report of a possible assault and bias crime at the fruit stand spot, but declined further comment.
Jenny Hansson, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Justice, said people in Oregon are encouraged to report encounters like the fruit stand attack to both police and the Oregon Department of Justice’s Bias Response Hotline.
The hotline can connect people to additional resources and support, including victim advocacy and translation services, Hansson said.
The Department of Justice has documented what happened at the stand based on video footage circulated online, Hansson said, but the stand operator hadn’t reached out to the department as of Thursday morning.
“Support is available even if you’re unsure whether what happened meets a legal definition of a ‘bias crime,” Hansson said by email. “No one should face this kind of treatment, and Oregonians stepping in to help, as happened here, reflects the kind of community response we want to see.”
This year’s annual Bias Crime Report is scheduled to be released in July and will reflect reports to the hotline, typically an undercount. Out of 757 cases from 2020 through 2024, 649 led to a bias firs-degree or second-degree charge and 108 involved a non-bias charge. Out of those, 62% resulted in a conviction, according to last year’s annual report.
A fundraiser page for Reyna has raised more than $6,000 to help pay for a new produce stand and other family needs.
