Never Charged, Now Sued: Portland Shop Owner Who Shot a Pre-Dawn Intruder Faces a $10 Million Claim

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

PORTLAND, OR — A man who broke into a closed Portland granite and marble shop before dawn and was shot by the owner sleeping inside is now asking a Multnomah County jury for $10 million.

Kenneth Voyles filed the suit on May 6, 2026 against Touchstone Granite & Marble Inc. and its owner, James Grant, alleging battery, assault, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and seeking $5 million in compensatory damages plus another $5 million in punitive damages, as reported by KPTV, which reviewed the filing. Grant’s account of the shooting and the fact that he was never charged come from Bearing Arms, which covered his testimony after the trial opened the week of August 10.

Start with what nobody is arguing about. Early on March 6, 2023, Voyles got into the closed business on Northeast Columbia Boulevard through a damaged section of a garage bay door. He was homeless, cold and sleep-deprived, and he was looking for warmth and food. Once inside he picked up a bag with a drill in it. His own complaint concedes he was a trespasser and that he intended to keep the drill.

What he did not know was that Grant was asleep in a back room. Grant did not know he had company either. The two men met in a dark showroom at an hour when neither had any reason to expect another human being in the building.

Grant threw objects at him, including heavy tiles, and Voyles ran for the garage door he had come in through. Surveillance cameras caught that first encounter. The second confrontation, seconds later near the garage door, was not on video, and that is precisely where the two accounts split.

Grant told jurors he did not have his hearing aids in and could not make out anything Voyles was saying. He said he intended to hold Voyles at gunpoint until police arrived. When the intruder raised a pair of bolt cutters over his head, Grant testified, he believed he was about to be attacked and fired three shots. “My adrenaline was flowing, to just protect myself,” he said.

Voyles tells it differently. He says he was apologizing the entire time, that he grabbed the bolt cutters to shield himself and to cut the padlock so he could get out, and that Grant left the room, came back with a handgun and opened fire without a word. His complaint goes further, alleging that after the first rounds Grant said, “Yeah. You’re going to die, dude,” shot him in the chest at point-blank range, and fired again as he tried to squeeze back out through the broken door. Those are allegations in a civil pleading. No court has found them true, and the man who wrote them is the man who broke in.

The complaint says Voyles suffered penetrating chest wounds, a collapsed lung and shattered bones in his right arm requiring vascular repair and multiple surgeries.

Police did not arrest Grant. Prosecutors in Portland, a city not known for straining to side with armed business owners, reviewed what happened and brought no charges. Three years later Voyles found the courthouse door that was still open to him.

A prosecutor declining to charge does not close off a civil suit. Different forum, different burden. A criminal case requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, while a plaintiff in a civil case only has to persuade a jury that his version is more likely than not, and the payout he is chasing is money rather than a conviction. That gap is why a shooting the state considered lawful can still put the person who fired in front of a jury years later.

This is exactly the scenario self-defense coverage exists for. On the criminal side, Grant got the best outcome a defender can hope for. No arrest, no charges, no jury deciding whether to send him to prison. He is still sitting in a courtroom three years later with someone asking him for eight figures, and somebody is paying the lawyers who are there with him. CCW Safe covers that. Every plan on their comparison chart lists civil defense costs, paid upfront, with no cap, and every plan covers civil trial costs even if the member was found guilty in the criminal trial. Training and mindset are what keep you alive in the showroom at 5 a.m. Coverage is what keeps a lawful shooting from costing you your house.

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Deadly force is justified only against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, and that is the same standard armed citizens across the country carry under every day. Grant’s testimony puts him squarely inside it. Heavy steel bolt cutters raised overhead at close range in a dark building are a weapon, whatever the man holding them says he meant by it afterward. The drill bag was never the issue, and Grant never claimed it was. He described a man closing on him with something in his hands that could crush a skull.

The part of this suit that should get every small business owner’s attention is the part that reaches past Grant. Voyles argues Touchstone is vicariously liable because Grant was acting within the scope of his duties to secure the business, and that the company failed to put reasonable policies or training in place for after-hours security responses. Read that twice if you sleep near your shop, keep a gun in the office, or have ever asked an employee to go check why the alarm tripped at 3 a.m. It is an effort to turn one man’s split-second decision into a corporate training failure, and it is pointed at an insurance policy.