Two Bend raids preceded officer-involved shooting
While authorities have yet to divulge many details about a fatal officer-involved shooting at a northeast Bend home Friday night, Bend police disclosed Sunday a timeline of a theft, guns and drug investigation that led to a pair of raids Friday – one at the home – and the arrests of a Bend woman and her two sons.
Bend police opened an investigation Oct. 28 into a series of cargo trailer thefts, firearms violations by convicted felons and heroin possession and sales, said Capt. Jim Porter.
The investigation identified Christopher Lee Edlefsen, 26, and his younger brother, Mitchell Kelly Harpole, 22, as suspects, along with “unnamed others” involved in stealing the trailers, illegally possessing guns, and possessing and delivering heroin, Porter said.
The brothers live with their mother, Sharon Ruis, 52, at a home at 2878 NE Jackdaw Drive where the fatal shooting occurred, the captain said.
Last Wednesday, investigators recovered one of the stolen cargo trailers parked near 1565 NE First Street, across the street from Edlefsen’s rented business/shop building at 1560 NE First St., No. 13, Porter said, and he was identified as a suspect in the theft of the trailer.
On Friday, around 11 a.m., Bend police served two search warrants, one at the Edlefsen’s Jackdaw Drive home and the other at his business. The two brothers were arrested at the shop and lodged at the Deschutes County Jail. Ruis was at the Jackdaw Drive home at the time of the raid and was taken into custody on an unrelated arrest warrant.
At the First Street shop, Porter said, police seized a 9 mm “machine pistol,” shoulder holsters for pistols, documents implicating Edlefsen in the cargo trailer theft and a substance believed to be heroin.
At the Jackdaw Drive home, officers seized four guns illegally possessed by Edlefsen, as well as amounts of heroin and a substance believed to be methamphetamine, the officer said.
Officers finished their search of the home and left around 5 p.m. Friday, Porter said; that’s about 5 hours before a report of a possible burglary in progress brought police back to the scene, resulting in the fatal encounter with a 31-year-old man.
Edlefsen remained jailed Sunday, held on $90,000 bail and facing charges of unauthorized use of a vehicle, unlawful entry into a vehicle, heroin and methamphetamine possession, four counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm and conspiring to commit a felony.
Harpole was conditionally released Sunday on a charge of heroin possession, a jail officer said, while Ruis posted 10 percent of her $30,000 bail and was released from jail Friday. She had been charged with two counts of failing to appear in court on earlier charges of DUII, resisting arrest, and first- and second-degree criminal trespass, a jail officer said.
Christopher Edlefsen was in the news in mid-September, when Oregon State Police arrested him on several charges after he allegedly eluded police on Third Street in Bend at speeds of up to 85 mph, then filed a false police report claiming that his silver Subaru Impreza had been stolen.
He later was arrested on a felony charge of attempt to elude in a vehicle, as well as reckless driving, recklessly endangering another person and initiating a false police report.
