Portland Woman Called 911 Minutes Before A Bullet Killed Her

PORTLAND, OR — Take a look at the picture and look into the eyes of 29-year-old Maria Gonzalez Rocha. Officials believe that the last thing they saw was her ex-boyfriend, a gun in hand as he prepared to kill her.

Which is what officials tell Patch that he did. Around 3:40 on Sunday afternoon.

About 7 minutes earlier, Gonzalez had been on the phone with a 911 dispatcher. She said that she was in the bathroom of her apartment on Southeast 171st Avenue by Division Street. She said that she was being held hostage by her ex-boyfriend. She was terrified.

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Through tears, she pleaded with her captor, saying "Please, please don't. Please f-----g don't."

At that point, the phone was ripped away from her.

A man who said his name was Jason told the dispatcher that he'd caught Gonzalez using drugs and that she'd been using Xanax. He calmly assured the dispatcher that there were no guns in the home.

The dispatcher could hear Gonzalez scream "Davonte Donahue." Then the phone call was cut off.

Minutes later another woman called 911.

She told the dispatcher that she had heard a woman screaming followed by gunfire.

Officers responded to the scene and made their way up the stairs to the apartment from where the first call had been made. They got to the apartment and pounded on the door.

As they did so, officers noticed neighbors coming out of their apartments and quickly decided to evacuate the neighbors.

The neighbors safely moved away, one of the officers banged on the door again, identifying himself loudly as "Portland Police."

A man on the other side of the door fired about five shots. No one was hit but the officers moved to a slightly more secure location. As they did so, they could hear the man yell, "No!"

That was followed by at least 30 more shots being fired from the apartment. No officers fired back. No officers were injured.

Based on the name the woman screamed, property records, and talking with neighbors, police figured that the woman inside was Gonzalez – it was her place – and the man was likely Davonte Donahue, the name that she had yelled.

Police were told that the two had been dating but she had broken it off.

They also discovered that Donahue had been caught on video escaping from a federal reentry center on August 12. He'd been released from federal prison the month before after serving 5 years of a 9-year sentence for sex trafficking a minor.

Officials say that the video shows Donahue jumping over a fence into the parking lot of the Ramada Inn next door. He then got into a white sedan that had apparently been waiting for him.

Marshals found the ankle bracelet that Donahue had been wearing in the parking lot. It had been cut off.

With that information and the fact that the many that they believed to be Donahue having had fired dozens of shots at them, the officers called for backup from the Police Bureau's crisis negotiating team and the special emergency response team.

Over the next 10 hours or so, police tried to talk Donahue out of the apartment, they even broke windows and fired in tear gas.

Finally, around 1 a.m., using more tear gas and a robot, officers made their way inside and were able to arrest Donahue who now faces charges of attempted murder and first-degree murder.

The man that police say he killed, Gonzalez, was on the bathroom floor. She was dead.

Gonzalez became one of 79 homicide victims in Portland this year, 59 of whom were shot to death. There have been 1,150 shootings in Portland this year.

She leaves behind her mother, two sisters, and a young son.

Family and friends set up a GoFundMe to raise money for her funeral. Anything extra will go into a fund for her son.