Aaron H. Follstad-Martin, a 44-year-old Black/African American man, was shot and killed on the evening of July 15, 2022, in Southeast Portland, Oregon. Portland police officers were dispatched at approximately 7:52 p.m. to the area of Southeast 124th Avenue and Southeast Powell Boulevard in the Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood after receiving a report of a shooting. When officers arrived, they found Follstad-Martin deceased at the scene.
The medical examiner later determined that he died from a gunshot wound and formally ruled his death a homicide. Police initially released little information about what had led to the shooting or whether the victim and shooter had been together before the gunfire.
In the days after the killing, Follstad-Martin’s family and friends gathered near the intersection where he died, creating a memorial with flowers, candles and photographs. His wife, Shalonda Follstad-Martin, publicly described the loss as devastating and pressed investigators to find the person responsible. She acknowledged that her husband was not perfect but remembered him as a good and generous person who did not deserve to be killed. Other reporting described him as a father, and relatives portrayed him as someone willing to help people around him.
For several months, authorities did not publicly identify an alleged killer. By the fall of 2022, however, investigators had identified Janae Tanell Kelley as the suspect in Follstad-Martin’s death. Authorities obtained an arrest warrant and appealed to the public for information about her location. The investigation remained active while Kelley was wanted, and contemporary law-enforcement notices did not publicly explain the circumstances or motive behind the shooting.
The case changed on January 27, 2023, when members of the U.S. Marshals Violent Offender Task Force located and arrested Kelley in Chandler, Arizona, more than six months after the homicide. Portland police said Kelley was accused of killing Follstad-Martin and announced that she had been charged with second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon. Following the Arizona arrest, authorities said she was expected to remain there while the extradition process was carried out so that she could face the Oregon charges.
Public reporting also shows that Follstad-Martin and Kelley had encountered Portland police together before the homicide. In February 2022, several months before his death, officers stopped a vehicle associated with Follstad-Martin and arrested him on an outstanding warrant. Kelley, who was a passenger, was also arrested during that incident and booked on firearm-related allegations and an outstanding warrant after police reported recovering a firearm from the vehicle. That earlier encounter establishes that the two knew one another or were at least traveling together before the later homicide, but publicly available reporting reviewed for this synopsis does not establish that the February incident caused or directly contributed to the July shooting.
Available law-enforcement and news reports identify Kelley as the accused suspect and document her arrest and murder-related charges, but they do not publicly disclose a clear motive or a detailed account of what occurred immediately before Follstad-Martin was shot. The online sources reviewed also do not provide a reliably documented later trial verdict, guilty plea, conviction or sentence in this homicide case. The most firmly established public progression is therefore that Follstad-Martin was found fatally shot in Powellhurst-Gilbert, investigators eventually identified Kelley as the suspect, a warrant was issued while her whereabouts were unknown, and federal fugitive officers ultimately arrested her in Arizona to face second-degree murder and weapons charges in connection with his death.
