Mail carrier David Knapp was walking on his route along a snow-covered Milwaukie street just after noon on Christmas Eve 2022 when he spotted a white van slowly rolling toward him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the van stop in the middle of Southeast 37th Avenue. Then he heard three loud pops.
A U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Knapp recognized the gunshots as coming from a small-caliber rifle. He suddenly felt a burning sensation in his leg.
He yelled out an expletive and ran for cover behind a nearby home as he pulled out his cellphone and dialed 911. When medics arrived, they cut through his dark tights and found a through-and-through wound on his left leg. A bullet had entered the back of his thigh and exited out the front, a few inches above his knee.
Police sought video from neighborhood homes and printed flyers to try to find the suspect in what they said was an unprovoked and shocking ambush-style shooting of a public servant.
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