Prosecutors said the victim was walking away when Cresencio Flores opened fire outside a Lloyd District apartment building.
PORTLAND, Ore. — A Portland man was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the 2024 shooting death of a stranger outside the Louisa Flowers apartments, a case prosecutors said began with a brief street encounter and ended in nine gunshots.
The sentence closed the criminal case against 27-year-old Cresencio Flores in the death of 45-year-old Jacob Forrest, who was killed on July 28, 2024, in the city’s Lloyd District. The case drew attention because Flores told police he feared for his life after Forrest slapped him and appeared to have a gun, but investigators later determined the weapon Forrest carried was fake. Prosecutors said the immediate danger had passed when Forrest turned and walked away.
Police said officers were called at 6:02 a.m. that Sunday to reports of shots fired near Northeast 6th Avenue and Northeast Holladay Street. When they arrived, they found Forrest dead on the sidewalk. Investigators later said the shooting happened outside the 12-story Louisa Flowers apartment building, a large affordable housing complex at 515 N.E. Holladay St. Court records described an encounter between two groups of men who had not known each other before that morning. Surveillance video, according to prosecutors, showed Forrest arriving with three other people while Flores was outside smoking with friends. The men exchanged words. At one point, Forrest slapped Flores on the cheek and threw Flores’ bicycle into the street. Forrest also had what looked like a handgun tucked into his waistband. Investigators later said it was not a real gun.
That detail became central to the case. After his arrest, Flores told detectives he acted in self-defense because he believed the gun was real and thought Forrest was trying to humiliate him in front of his friends. Prosecutors gave a different account. They said video showed Forrest turning away and walking off when Flores stood up, pulled a real firearm and fired nine times into Forrest’s back. Forrest died before he could be taken to a hospital. Portland police later said the medical examiner ruled the death a homicide caused by gunshot wounds. Authorities did not report any previous relationship between the two men. The record made public in news reports does not show that Forrest fired or pointed the fake gun. It also does not fully explain what was said during the encounter because the surveillance video had no audio.
The case moved slowly after the shooting. Police announced in September 2024 that homicide detectives, backed by the bureau’s Special Emergency Reaction Team, arrested Flores on outstanding warrants related to Forrest’s death. He was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center on charges that at that stage included second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon. Prosecutors later pursued a murder case more broadly before reaching a plea agreement. Under that deal, Flores pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, and prosecutors dropped the top murder allegation they had prepared to take to trial. In court, prosecutor Ryan Solomon said the resolution was fair. Multnomah County Circuit Judge Christopher Ramras accepted the plea and imposed the agreed sentence. Flores did not speak during the hearing.
The setting added another layer to the story. The Louisa Flowers complex opened in 2019 and has been described by Portland housing officials as a 240-unit affordable housing development in the Lloyd District, one of the largest such projects completed in the city in decades. The building sits along a busy transit corridor near the convention center and major streets that carry morning foot traffic, drivers and TriMet service. Police said the July 28 shooting briefly shut down part of Northeast Holladay Street and affected transit in the area while homicide detectives worked the scene. Local reporting has tied multiple killings to or near the property since it opened, a backdrop that has kept public attention on violence in and around the block even when individual cases involve people who did not know each other beforehand.
The legal outcome turned on the difference between fear and lawful force. Public court descriptions show that Flores claimed he did not know the gun was fake and believed Forrest posed a deadly threat. But prosecutors said the key moment came after the slap, when Forrest was no longer advancing and had begun to leave. That sequence helped explain why the case ended in manslaughter rather than an acquittal on self-defense grounds and why the original murder path was narrowed in a plea deal instead of tested before a jury. First-degree manslaughter in Oregon covers killings that are intentional or extreme under the law but do not remain charged or proven as murder in the final judgment. By pleading guilty, Flores avoided a trial and the uncertainty of a much more serious conviction, while the state secured a decade-long prison term without further litigation over the video, witness accounts and the fake gun.
Even in the bare facts laid out by police and prosecutors, the case has a jarring shape. It began as a fast, messy sidewalk confrontation between strangers just after dawn. It ended with a man dead in a public place and another facing years in prison because he answered a slap and a perceived insult with gunfire. The phrases that surfaced in court gave the case its sharpest edge. Flores told detectives he believed Forrest was trying to embarrass him, according to court records described in news accounts. Prosecutors told the judge that Forrest was shot while walking away. Those two ideas, one rooted in fear and pride, the other in the victim’s final movement, framed the arguments around culpability. They also underscored how quickly a dispute that may have lasted only moments turned irreversible.
The case now stands as resolved unless later appeals or post-conviction motions change the record. Forrest’s death remains one of the homicide cases that Portland police investigated in the Lloyd District in recent years, and the court proceedings have established the state’s final account well enough to support a conviction without trial. Flores, now sentenced, is expected to serve his term in state custody. The next formal milestone would come only if a court filing seeks to challenge the plea, sentence or related rulings.
Author note: Last updated March 15, 2026.