Landon Ostrom answered the knock at his apartment front door, expecting to see a friend he planned to have dinner with.
Instead, he encountered two men and a woman.
And a gun.
In an instant, Ostrom was shot, hit in the chest and left with a life-threatening wound.
The shooting on Friday, Oct. 24, in a north apartment Keizer complex drew a heavy police response. The Keizer Police Department has released few details about the attempted murder, saying only that detectives believe Ostrom was targeted.
So far no one has been arrested.
But interviews show that the rush of strangers to help that night likely saved Ostrom’s life. He remains in Salem Hospital, facing a long recovery, according to his mother, Carmen Ostrom.
Landon Ostrom, 20, graduated in 2023 from McNary High School, where he played basketball. He lived alone in a second-floor unit at Hawk’s Point Apartments on Northeast McGee Court, east of River Road. He is employed by Amazon, working in Woodburn.
The knock on the door came at about 9:30 p.m. that Friday.
“When he realized the people outside had a gun, he tried to close the door, but was shot in the process,” according to the account on a Gofundme account for Ostrom.
As he lay on the floor bleeding, the three stepped over him and grabbed some of Ostrom’s property and left. They took his cell phone.
With no way to call for help, Ostrom made it down the stairs and made his way to a nearby duplex, collapsing on the porch. He yelled for help.
Gavin Hyatt was helping his sister move into Hawk’s Point when he heard what he thought were gunshots, he said, and he’s familiar with guns. He wasn’t sure though, thinking it also might just the noise of a busy complex. He went back into his sister’s apartment.
“I think those were gunshots,” he told his stepfather, James Mulhern and his mother, Jennifer Mulhern.
Hyatt said he went outside to the trailer when “I heard someone screaming – ‘Please open the door. I’m bleeding out here.’”
He said he heard Ostrom shout, “I’m shot. I got shot.”
Hyatt said he ran into the apartment to tell what he heard. He said he then went outside, toward the sound of Ostrom’s voice.
“He didn’t think twice” about going towards Ostrom, unaware where the shooter might be, his mother later recalled.
Hyatt found the man on the porch, laying on his back. His mother quickly joined him.
“When we got close, he was saying, ‘I’m going to die,’” Jennifer Mulhern said.
“I started putting pressure on the gunshot wound. I grabbed a towel and asked for more towels,” said Hyatt, who is in nursing school.
“Am I going to die?” Ostrom asked.
Hyatt asked his mother to get his stepdad. A paramedic, James Mulhern is a battalion chief with Marion County Fire District 1.
Mulhern assessed Ostrom as police arrived.
The concern with a chest wound is to stop bleeding while keeping air from entering the wound, Mulhern said.
An officer handed him a bandage called a chest seal, designed for such wounds.
“Potentially, that was the lifesaving piece,” he said later.
Ostrom’s mother, Carmen Ostrom, has no doubt that action by the son and father “absolutely” saved her son’s life.
She said he will be off work for an indeterminate time, facing a long recovery and physical therapy.
A family friend launched the Gofundme campaign to help cover medical and living expenses. By Friday, Oct. 31, the campaign had raised nearly $12,000.
Carmen Ostrom said her son is progressing day by day.
“He’s an absolute miracle,” she said.
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