Rhorer

PENDLETON — A Pendleton man arrested Tuesday morning, June 2, is accused of assaulting a 16-year-old girl on May 29 and leaving her with injuries that resulted in her being flown to a Portland hospital.

After a multiple-day investigation, the Pendleton Police Department arrested Matthew Daniel Rhorer, 35, on probable cause charges of attempted murder and first-degree kidnapping, according to a press release.

Pendleton police were first dispatched to the area of Northeast Riverside Avenue and Highway 11 for reports of a female screaming for help around 6:43 p.m. on May 29. A second call then specified that the injured girl was near the “old nursery,” the release stated.

After police located the girl and identified the extent of her injuries, Pendleton Fire and EMS responded to the scene and transported her to St. Anthony Hospital. She was later flown by helicopter to the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, according to the release, and was in intensive care for several hours before her condition later stabilized.

“She sustained head injuries, facial fracture(s), and loss of teeth as a result of the alleged assault,” the release stated. “The ensuing investigation relied heavily on forensic evidence, and a vague physical description provided by a transient male who reported having contact with an unknown bloody male who was reportedly trying to carry or drag the 16-year-old female who the transient knows.”

Pendleton officers made contact with Rhorer early Tuesday morning, June 2, and took him into custody, and he is now being held at the Umatilla County Jail in Pendleton.

Rhorer resided in the area and is a registered sex offender, the release stated, and it’s believed that he didn’t know the victim.

Oregon court records show that Rhorer was previously indicted for violent crimes in Umatilla County and was under the jurisdiction of the Oregon Psychiatric Security Review Board until recently.

According to court documents, Rhorer pleaded guilty except for insanity to first-degree attempted rape and first-degree attempted kidnapping in 2009 for allegedly attacking a woman from Umatilla. A psychological evaluation ordered during the trial deemed Rhorer was “affected by a mental disease” and the court ruled that he “lacked substantial capacity to either appreciate the criminality of the conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirement of the law.”

In sentencing on Jan. 20, 2009, presiding Umatilla County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Hill ordered Rhorer to no more than 10 years under jurisdiction of the Psychiatric Security Review Board and committed him to the state hospital in Salem.

According to an email from Alison Bort, executive director of the Oregon Psychiatric Security Review Board, those who assert the insanity defense are given the maximum allowable sentence. In Rhorer’s case, this means he was under the review board’s supervision until June 2018.

“Accordingly, the monitoring and supervision that was ordered by the PSRB and executed by the community partner overseeing the case can no longer be mandated. Neither the PSRB or the criminal court have any authority to extend the sentence,” Bort said. “Leading up to the end of jurisdiction, there is collaboration with the county of responsibility, treatment providers in the civil system, (the Oregon Health Authority), the PSRB provider and other systems as needed to develop a transition plan.”

The most recently available documents outlining Rhorer’s conditional release show he was under strict rules from the review board as recently as November 2017. According to those documents, Rhorer wasn’t allowed to leave his residence between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., drive, own a cellphone, have any unsupervised visits with females or access the internet without a staff member present.