A 25-year-old former college soccer player suspected of savagely attacking a 78-year-old man on a train platform in Oregon — and chewing off his ear and part of his face — told cops he believed the victim was a killer robot, according to prosecutors.
Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt announced Wednesday that Koryn Kraemer has been arraigned on a second-degree assault charge stemming from the grisly incident that took place the day before at a light-rail train station in the Portland suburb of Gresham.
The victim was standing on the Cleveland Avenue TriMetMAX platform at around 2 a.m. Tuesday when Kraemer, who was allegedly drunk and high on fentanyl and marijuana, approached the elderly man and proceeded to gnaw on his face.
Police responded to the scene and pulled Kraemer off the victim. By then, the 25-year-old had chewed off the man’s ear and bitten the skin off his face to the point of exposing his skull.
The victim was taken to a local hospital, where he was listed in stable condition Wednesday, reported OregonLive.
“In a subsequent interview with law enforcement, Kraemer stated that he believed the victim was a ‘robot’ trying to kill him based on how the victim smelled,” DA Schmidt said in a statement.
Kraemer also said that he spit out the victim’s flesh that he had bitten off, and claimed that police “had saved his life by separating him from ‘the robot.’”
Schmidt added that the suspect admitted to consuming alcohol, cannabis and fentanyl pills before the bloody assault.
Kraemer initially gave cops a fake name, “El Baker,” but Multnomah County Jail personnel were able to determine his true identity through fingerprint comparison.
A disheveled-looking Kraemer sporting a bushy beard appeared in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the assault charge. Prosecutors asked that the defendant be held without bail until trial.
The station KGW8 reported that Kraemer had been evicted from his rental home in November after allegedly trashing the property.
The owner of the house told the station that Kraemer, who had recently relocated to Oregon from Georgia, was pleasant when he was not drinking or smoking marijuana, but then something changed in his behavior and he started mumbling to himself.
Kraemer grew up in Westfield, New Jersey, and previously attended Oberlin College in Ohio, where he was a goalie on the men’s soccer team in 2015 and 2016.
He will remain behind bars pending a detention hearing that has not yet been scheduled.
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