By QUINTON SMITH/Lincoln Chronicle
The widow of a tourist beaten to death outside a Lincoln City motel in May 2024 has filed a $20 million lawsuit against the man charged with killing her husband, the man’s father and the motel where they were all staying.
Roland Evans-Freke, 31, is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter, assault and robbery in the death of Bradley Cole, 69, of Milwaukie in the parking lot of the Ashley Inn the night of May 14, 2024.
Cole and his wife, Debra, were spending the night at the motel after coming to the coast to celebrate their 37th anniversary. Cole was killed about 10 p.m. when he was repeatedly kicked, punched and kneed while resisting Evans-Freke’s attempts to take his dog, according to police and court reports.
Bradley and Debra Cole have two sons and a daughter; he retired in 2017 as a heating and cooling engineer for Multnomah County.
Evans-Freke has a long history of mental illness, run-ins with police in Lincoln City and Newport and since his arrest twice has been sent by a Lincoln County judge to the Oregon State Hospital for evaluation and treatment.
But he had been acting erratically months before his encounter with Cole, the lawsuit says and the motel, its management company and Evans-Freke’s father had not done enough to control him or warn motel guests.
Debra Cole filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Clackamas County Circuit Court against Evans-Freke, his father Stephen Evans-Freke, Ashley Inn & Suites and Miracle K Management, which oversees the Lincoln City property. While it seeks $20 million in damages, the lawsuit also asked the court to triple the award.
Long fight with illness
The lawsuit lays out Roland Evans-Freke’s long and increasingly violent issues with mental illness beginning when he was a teen-ager and his father’s attempts to direct or deal with him. Stephen Evans-Freke is a retired Wall Street investment banker who lives in the Virgin Islands but repeatedly came to Lincoln County to try to deal with his son or his living situation.
The lawsuit said his parents twice had Roland Evans-Freke committed to a psychiatric hospital, but also paid for training at a New York city boxing gym. The lawsuit said his father agreed to set up a boxing gym in Key West, Florida, but instead Evans-Freke drove to Bend in 2022 where he eventually began living in a homeless camp.
Once he discovered his son was homeless, the lawsuit said Stephen Evans-Freke started paying for his son to live in motels and that Roland Evans-Freke moved to the Oregon coast in May 2023 and began staying at the Ashley Inn in Lincoln City and the Comfort Inn in Newport. At the coast, the lawsuit said, Evans-Freke’s mental health continued to worsen.
“He was repeatedly arrested for trespass throughout the summer of 2023,” the lawsuit says. “By November 2023, he had again begun to collect weapons and was confused, incoherent, and frantic. Staff at the Comfort Inn reported to defendant Stephen Evans-Freke that his son was talking to himself, hearing voices, and wearing knives in the public areas of the Comfort Inn.”
Stephen Evans-Freke petitioned Dec. 1, 2023, to have his son involuntarily committed, but Debra Cole’s lawsuit said the petition was denied.
Lincoln County court records show that Newport police arrested Evans-Freke on Dec. 4, 2023, for unlawfully carrying concealed weapons — several knives and sharpened throwing cards. He was released from jail three weeks later.
In a probable cause affidavit filed Dec. 5, 2024, Newport police officer Jack Grippin wrote that Stephen Evans-Freke said his son was schizophrenic, bipolar, had severe paranoia and was not on any medication. The father told police that his son “has become very violent” and that “Roland is hearing voices telling him to kill someone,” Grippin’s affidavit said.
During proceedings in February and March 2024, Lincoln County Circuit Judge Sheryl Bachart set several conditions for Evans-Freke’s release, asked for reviews to see if Evans-Freke was mentally capable to assist in his defense, and scheduled a trial for June – a month after the fatal encounter with Cole outside the Lincoln City motel.
Part of the December case file was a probable cause affidavit by the Newport officer who arrested Evans-Freke. The officer said the suspect’s father was in town trying to have his son involuntarily committed because “he has become very violent.”
Involuntary commitments are very hard to do and require expert evaluations, court hearings and a judge finding clear and convincing evidence that the person has a mental disorder and is dangerous to themselves or others. There is no public court record in Lincoln County that such a hearing took place as the lawsuit says.
On Wednesday, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that Bachart extended Evans-Freke’s commitment to the state hospital for another six months after finding him unfit to aid in his defense shortly after the May 2024 killing. A forensic psychiatrist testified during Wednesday’s commitment hearing that Evans-Freke suffers from schizophrenia but doesn’t believe he has a mental illness. His defense lawyer Elizabeth J.C. Baker of Eugene said Evans-Freke has had a long-standing mental illness with no prior use of consistent medication.
Trouble in motels
The lawsuit says that after Evans-Freke was kicked out of the Comfort Inn in Newport, he returned to the Ashley Inn in Lincoln City where his mental health issues continued to decline. It said motel employees “witnessed, discussed and corresponded” with his father about the issues and their complaints.
The lawsuit said from April 29 to May 13, 2024 Stephen Evans-Freke exhibited “violent propensities and florid psychosis” but the Ashley Inn’s managers, owners and his father were negligent in allowing him to continue living in the motel and failed to warn guests or make the property “reasonably safe.”
The lawsuit says Debra Cole is entitled to three times the $20 million claim because Oregon law allows treble damages against was a vulnerable, older man and the defendants failed to act to prevent the May 14, 2024, attack.
Debra Cole told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Wednesday that she filed the lawsuit so what happened to their family doesn’t happen to others. People should expect to feel safe when they stay at a motel, she said, and a year later said she can’t accept how her husband’s life ended.
“It’s so hard to do every day without him,” she said.
- Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
This is an incredibly heartbreaking event. My heart goes out to the Cole family.
As a minister, grief counselor, and clinical psychotherapist, I have seen over decades how devastating a loss like this is, and that it changes peoples’ lives forever.
There is a particularly troubling sentence in the article:
“A forensic psychiatrist testified during Wednesday’s commitment hearing that Evans-Freke suffers from schizophrenia but doesn’t believe he has a mental illness.”
Comment:
1. Schizophrenia is a very severe mental illness. In quite a number of folks who suffer from it, there are seizure-like episodes that can erupt suddenly, sometimes in the form of violence towards others.
2. It doesn’t matter whether the afflicted person believes they suffer from mental illness or not … What matters is that society and professionals have a responsibility to register early signs and appropriately protect the public, which obviously has been grossly neglected here.
3. The narrow landscape of diagnostic profiles is a questionable framework for this kind of incident, specifically so, because the murderer has been known as a severely troubled person for a long time.
4. The unbelievable degree of negligence and indifference regarding Mr. Cole’s safety around the hotel premises, allowing a known aggressor to remain close, needs to be named and pointed out.
The Cole family is entitled to every penny of the triple amount of the 20-million lawsuit. Money does not bring back a loved family member, but there needs to be some very clear justice and re-orientation here.
Mark S. PhD
Clinical Psychotherapist