Baker County friends mourn Baker High graduate killed in Portland blast

Bruce Valentine Whitman, 49, was more than a name in a Portland police report to people in Baker County. Sarah Heiner said she first knew him in Sumpter in the 1990s, worked with him at Borello’s restaurant and stayed in touch after he later lived in Baker City and Boise before settling in Portland.

Whitman died early Saturday, May 2, when police said he drove a rented vehicle through the front windows of the Multnomah Athletic Club just before 3 a.m. and tried to detonate multiple improvised explosive devices inside the eight-story, 135-year-old building. Most of the devices failed, and no one else was injured. The club said it would remain closed for at least a week while repairs were made.

For Heiner, the details only sharpened the grief. She said she was stunned to learn that a longtime friend and 1995 Baker High School graduate was the person killed in the blast. Her reaction mixed sorrow with anger, as she described someone she considered a good person who, in her view, had fallen through the cracks of the mental-health system.

Other Baker High classmates remembered Whitman as a familiar face from school days. Abby Dennis, who had the female lead in Baker High’s production of Barefoot in the Park with Whitman, remembered him as a sweet human being. Tori Vinson Whiting, another member of the Class of 1995, said she always got along with him.

The attack also highlighted a longer history that had already drawn attention from police and hospitals. Portland police behavioral health outreach had contact with Whitman beginning in 2021 and through June 2022, including incidents in which he protested outside the MAC and harassed community members. Family members said Whitman attempted suicide in February 2026 and spent several weeks at Unity Center in Portland, where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Family members also said Whitman suffered brain damage in a motorcycle accident several years ago and held a long grudge against the Multnomah Athletic Club, where he had worked as a bartender before being fired more than a decade earlier. Reporting also said he lost guns under Oregon’s red-flag law.

For Baker County, the loss reaches beyond one violent moment in Portland. It brings back a former Baker High student remembered in Sumpter, Baker City and Boise, while also feeding a broader Oregon debate over civil commitment, gun restrictions and whether the state’s mental-health system can intervene before warning signs turn deadly.