By rssfeeds-admin He defeated the incumbent — and his boss at the time — Mike Schmidt in a May election last year by winning 53% of the vote. He stepped into office in January 2025.
A graduate of Lewis & Clark Law School, Vasquez has spent his career in the Multnomah County DA’s office, going from intern to lead prosecutor — and now DA.
In a recent case, Hooman “Tony” Rahnamoon returned to court after being charged with three Class-A Misdemeanors related to the fentanyl overdose death of 15-year-old Lauren Dominguez. Investigators said he was there when his son and Lauren were doing the drugs at his Northeast Portland home.
Court documents indicate he admitted to the crimes a few days before she passed, saying he saw his son and Lauren using pills and saw Lauren crush up blue pills and snort them at his house.
But why move forward with only misdemeanors in this case? Vasquez explained that the family had spent years begging for justice after there were no criminal charges against Rahnamoon. This led them to ask him to reconsider the case once he was in office.
“You know, we weren’t able to determine who provided her [Lauren] with the fentanyl, but certainly we looked at Mr. Rahnamoon and his role in this death and decided that charges were appropriate,” he said.
After his first court appearance on Feb. 11, Rahnamoon was supposed to check in with authorities, but Vasquez ended up seeing him on the street.
“Well, I knew at that point in time he had a warrant out for his arrest, and this family, they deserve justice. It’s been delayed too long; this needs to go forward,” he said. “I saw a sheriff’s deputy, and I do what I hope anyone does: I took action. I told the sheriff’s deputy, ‘He has a warrant, he needs to be taken into custody,’ and that sheriff’s deputy acted appropriately.”
Amid an ongoing fentanyl crisis in Oregon, Vasquez said he expects to prosecute more of these kind of cases.
“This office is very intentional in not only going after the ones that are out there right now,” he said. “We’re going over the past few years and looking at cases that have been languishing and saying, ‘Hey, can we bring those forward appropriately?”
He also commented on a case that took place last spring at Portland State University, where there was a protest against the U.S. government’s role in Gaza. Around 30 people were arrested.
However, several of those cases have since been dismissed because video footage of the incidents were not turned over to defense attorneys. Vasquez shared his thoughts.
“Kind of an odd case in that it was one where video footage was taken by police, and there’s a state law that prohibits them from retaining it. We certainly asked for that footage from the police; they told us they didn’t retain it and that they didn’t have it, so we didn’t believe that it existed,” Vasquez said. “We later found out that they had given it to the city attorney’s office, who had retained it. Unfortunately, we were unaware of that. Now, I’m as disappointed as anyone that these cases weren’t able to go forward and so I’ve taken some very direct actions to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Vasquez also addressed ongoing issues with public defense and jail staffing, property crimes, and Trump’s crackdown on immigration.
Watch the full interview in the video player above.
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