Prosecutors said the victim was walking away when gunfire erupted outside the Louisa Flowers apartments in July 2024.

PORTLAND, Ore. — A Portland man was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the shooting death of a stranger he fired at nine times outside an apartment building in the city’s Lloyd District.

The sentence closes a case that began with a sidewalk confrontation on July 28, 2024, and ended with prosecutors dropping an original murder charge as part of a plea deal. Court records and police statements said Cresencio Flores, 27, shot 45-year-old Jacob Forrest after a brief encounter outside the Louisa Flowers apartments. The immediate legal stakes turned on whether Flores acted in self-defense, as he later claimed, or used deadly force after the danger had already passed.

Police and prosecutors said the confrontation began early that morning outside the apartment building near Northeast Holladay Street. Flores was outside smoking with friends when Forrest arrived in a car with three other people, according to court accounts described in later reports. Surveillance video showed Forrest carrying what looked like a real handgun and tucking it into his waistband, though investigators later said it was a realistic-looking fake gun. The video had no audio, but officials said the two men exchanged words. During the encounter, Forrest slapped Flores in the face and tossed Flores’ bicycle into the street. Prosecutors said Forrest then turned and started walking away. At that point, according to the state’s account, Flores stood up, pulled a real gun and fired nine times into Forrest’s back. Officers responding to the scene found Forrest dead.

The facts after the shooting became central to the prosecution. Flores told police after his arrest that he feared for his life and did not know the gun Forrest carried was fake. He also said he believed Forrest was trying to embarrass him in front of his friends. That explanation became one of the most striking parts of the case because prosecutors used it to argue that humiliation, not immediate danger, helped drive the gunfire. The state’s version of events emphasized timing: Forrest was already walking away when Flores opened fire. Public records available through police and later news reports do not indicate that the two men knew each other before that morning. They appeared to be strangers whose encounter lasted only moments before it turned deadly. That narrow timeline gave investigators a case shaped less by a long-running dispute than by surveillance footage, physical evidence and Flores’ own statements.

The killing happened in Portland’s Lloyd District, a dense area of apartments, transit stops and busy streets near the Oregon Convention Center. The Louisa Flowers building sits along a heavily traveled corridor, making the shooting more visible than a killing in a private home or isolated location. The police response shut down part of the area while homicide detectives investigated. Forrest’s death added to broader public concern about gun violence in Portland, but the case also stood out because of its compressed, almost random sequence. Prosecutors were not describing a planned ambush, a domestic dispute or a feud between people with a known history. Instead, they described a chance meeting between two groups outside an apartment complex, a brief escalation and a burst of gunfire after the physical confrontation had ended. That framing helped explain why the case remained notable even after it was resolved without a trial.

Investigators did not make an arrest immediately. Portland police announced on Sept. 24, 2024, that homicide detectives, assisted by the bureau’s Special Emergency Reaction Team, had arrested Flores, then 27, on outstanding warrants in Forrest’s death. He was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center on charges of second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon. Forrest’s family was notified of the arrest, police said at the time. The case then moved through Multnomah County court as a homicide prosecution. By February 2026, prosecutors and defense lawyers had reached a deal under which Flores pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. Reports from the sentencing hearing said Multnomah County Circuit Judge Christopher Ramras accepted the plea and imposed a 10-year prison term. Prosecutor Ryan Solomon told the judge the agreement was fair. Flores did not speak during the hearing.

The courtroom resolution answered the criminal charge but not every lingering question about the encounter. Publicly available accounts do not explain exactly what was said between the men before the slap, what Forrest intended by displaying the fake gun or whether anyone in either group tried to stop the argument before shots were fired. Still, the basic legal conclusion became clear through the plea: prosecutors were able to establish that Flores unlawfully caused Forrest’s death, even if they agreed to resolve the case short of a murder conviction. The plea also spared both sides a trial that would likely have focused heavily on surveillance video, the fake gun and Flores’ claim that he feared he was about to be shot. Instead, the case ended with a manslaughter conviction, a fixed prison term and a public record that portrays the killing as a sudden, disproportionate response to a street confrontation.

Flores now stands convicted of first-degree manslaughter and is serving a 10-year sentence in the Oregon prison system. With the plea entered and sentence imposed, the next milestone would come only through any later appeal or post-conviction challenge.

Author note: Last updated March 15, 2026.