Restoration teams are on site at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland, Ore., May 4, 2026. The facility was damaged after a man drove an explosives-laden vehicle into the entrance of the building in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Frankie Benitez / OPB
The man suspected of driving a vehicle loaded with improvised explosive devices into the Multnomah Athletic Club early Saturday had a history of threatening members of the social club.
Family members, and later Portland police, confirmed that Bruce Valentine Whitman was the driver who died inside a rental vehicle that crashed through the glass windows of the MAC building.
At a press conference Monday afternoon, police said the vehicle contained 20 propane tanks and approximately 10 improvised explosive devices — some of which went off inside the MAC making it challenging for investigators to know exactly how many bombs were inside the vehicle.
A vehicle, loaded with propane tanks, sits inside the Multnomah Athletic Club. Police officials say the car held 20 propane tanks and approximately 10 improvised explosive devices.
Courtesy of the Portland Police Bureau
“We recovered two or three live devices from the scene that were in different stages of detonating,” said Sgt. Jim DeFrain, supervisor of the explosive disposal unit. “And these things, bombs want to explode, and so it’s incumbent on us to be wildly careful.”
DeFrain said the first responders who arrived on scene early Saturday morning did not know about the explosive devices inside the vehicle.
“The firefighters began to pull the propane tanks out, and one of the firefighters opened up a door and a partially detonated pipe bomb fell at his feet,” he said. “It’s important to recognize how close this was to a real tragedy, and how lucky we are that it wasn’t.”
Propane tanks recovered from the vehicle that drove into the Multnomah Athletic Club on May 2, 2026.
Courtesy of the Portland Police Bureau
Whitman, 49, died in the car after it went up in flames.
As far back as 2022, Whitman threatened to destroy the MAC and showed up at the homes of six different members, according to Multnomah County Circuit Court records.
An undated image provided by family, of 48-year-old Bruce Valentine Whitman, who drove an explosives-laden vehicle through the front of the Multnomah Athletic Club early May 2, 2026. According to Whitman’s mother Rita Lenzer, he had struggled with mental illness for several years and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Courtesy of Rita Lenzer
“Whitman threatened to kill one member’s neighbor, threatened to kill a different member and told them he was going to burn down the MAC, and told another member he was there to murder the member,” Portland Police Officer Michael Hansen wrote in a June 15, 2022, petition ordering Whitman to surrender deadly weapons.
Oregon’s red flag law went into effect in 2018. It enables family members, roommates and law enforcement to petition the court to “remove a weapon, or a concealed handgun license, from an individual who is at risk for suicide or is a danger to others.”
Whitman’s history was previously reported by The Oregonian.
Whitman looked for MAC stickers on vehicles around Portland and would confront members in their cars. During an incident May 24, 2022, Whitman drove alongside another car driven by a woman who was a MAC member and flagged her down.
“After she stopped to see what he wanted Whitman yelled insults at the member and told her ‘I am going to kill you,’” Hansen wrote in the petition.
Portland Police first received a referral regarding Whitman in early 2021. Hansen wrote in that same petition that Whitman believed people at the MAC were “involved in a campaign of harassment and wanting to cause him physical harm.”
Police did not find Whitman’s concerns valid.
“Whitman has accused police officers and crisis responders of being sent by the MAC to harass him when they have had contact with him,” Hansen wrote.
“That’s just what his mind believed,” Rita Lenzer, Whitman’s mother, told OPB during an interview Sunday. “He just couldn’t leave it alone. It’s something he couldn’t let go.”
In June of 2022, the Multnomah Athletic Club sent an email to inform members of Whitman's escalated threats.
Obtained by OPB
Whitman worked as a bartender at the MAC before he was fired. The threats were so serious that the club’s security shared its concerns with members. In June of 2022, they informed members in an email that his verbal threats had “escalated” and that Whitman had been “detained by the Portland Police on a psychiatric hold awaiting further evaluation.”
During a separate incident Jan. 29, 2022, Whitman threatened his brother Jason Erickson at a restaurant after a family funeral in Corvallis.
Erickson told police he thought Whitman may have been under the influence of drugs or intoxicated when Whitman held a steak knife to his throat and said: “‘Don’t ever talk to me again … if I see you again I will kill you,’” according to court documents.
Whitman was arrested in 1999 for misdemeanor battery in Boise, Idaho, but the case was dismissed, court records show.
On Feb. 16, 2026, Whitman attempted to kill himself. He was subsequently admitted to Unity Center for Behavioral Health in Portland. Police filed another extreme risk protection order and Whitman surrendered two firearms, a 9 mm and a .38 special revolver.
This is a developing story and may be updated.
A bomb squad officer works outside the Multnomah Athletic Club as Portland Police Bureau, Federal Bureau of Investigations and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives crews work at the scene where a car with an explosive device inside crashed into the MAC, leaving one person dead and several blocks around the area closed, in Portland, Ore., on May 2, 2026.
Eli Imadali / OPB
