A Portland man has been charged with pulling the trigger in a fatal shooting five days after being sentenced in federal court to time served for the unlawful transport of a firearm.
Kimmie Donnell Edwards, 51, now faces a second-degree murder charge in the death of Joshua A. Byrd, who was found dead Dec. 18 near an Interstate 5 overpass in North Portland’s Eliot neighborhood.
Byrd, 38, lived in a house about two miles away, records show. A record number of people, at least 92, were killed in Portland homicides last year.
Portland Police Bureau officials haven’t released details about the circumstances of the fatal shooting. They didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
The murder charge was handed down after Edwards had already been returned to custody for violating the terms of his federal probation.
Beaverton police stopped Edwards last February because they suspected he was driving a stolen car, according to federal court records. They noticed that he carefully removed his jacket, records state, and they found a 9mm handgun inside the coat.
The gun was later determined to be stolen from across state lines, according to the records.
Beaverton police say they found this stolen Heckler & Koch 9mm handgun inside Kimmie Edwards' jacket in February 2021.
Edwards has a string of felony convictions in Texas and Arkansas dating back to the early 2000s, which make it illegal for him to have a gun.
He was released twice after his May federal court arraignment but relapsed into drug addiction both times and was taken back into custody, according to court records. Edwards has significant health issues, including looming heart failure, according to Ryan Costello, a federal public defender.
“The U.S. Probation Office cited Mr. Edwards’s incredibly poor health and his history of childhood trauma and his significant substance use disorder as the basis for the downward departure (from the conditions of supervised release),” Costello wrote in a sentencing memo.
U.S. District Judge Marco A. Hernandez sentenced Edwards on Dec. 13 to four and a half months in custody that he had already served. He’s currently being held in Multnomah County’s Inverness Jail.
— Zane Sparling; zsparling@oregonian.com; 503-319-7083; @pdxzane