A convenience store employee was fatally shot in Eugene earlier this month. Now, his mother shares his story.
Amber Deyo sat in the Eugene apartment where her son, Stephen Forrest, once lived. Beside her were his books and a journal he left behind.
“I've been all over from one minute to the next," she said. "This is probably, right now, the most peace I’ve felt in days.”
Stephen, 32, was shot while working the night shift at 7-Eleven on Saturday, Sept. 2. He died in the hospital two days later.
Deyo said her son was a uniquely beautiful person who was sometimes misunderstood.
“He was always a fabulous, terrible handful," she said. "You know, some kids have a lemonade stand. Stephen would go out, run an extension cord to the bus stop in front of our house and sell toast.”
Stephen was diagnosed with autism at an early age, and he dropped out of high school at age 16. But he eventually earned his GED, and a degree from Lane Community College.
“He has defied anything anyone thought he would do," Deyo said.
Deyo said her son was politically engaged. In his journal, he wrote about raises that he felt 7-Eleven employees deserved. She said he had many dreams, and he hoped one day to build affordable housing.
Deyo said they spoke to each other almost every day. Stephen called her "madre," or mother in Spanish.
“We talked on the phone, it would have just been, 12 hours before [the shooting] happened," she said. "The last thing I said to him, and the last thing he said to me, was 'I love you.'”
On the morning of Sept. 2, Deyo—who lives in Portland—received the call that her son had been the victim of a violent crime.
“I left in my pajamas, and I just drove to the hospital," she said. "I didn’t know for sure what was happening.”
When she arrived in Eugene, Stephen was unconscious, with severe brain injuries. She stayed at his bedside.
“It was just waiting, and [the doctors] told me that there was no possible chance," she said. "And, I had to go, I had to be there, but every day made it harder.”
Deyo described the experience as traumatic. But she said when she promised to always be there for her son, she meant it.
“Even though Stephen more likely than not didn't know I was there, I sat with him, I held his hand. I sung to him. I talked to him," she said. "He wouldn’t have left me if it were different."
Months before the shooting, Stephen Forrest gave his mother a letter, titled “If Stephen is Dead.” Deyo said her son wasn’t paranoid: just thorough.
“I just put it at the back of a file," she said, "because of course I'm gonna die long before him.”
Deyo retrieved the letter last week, and read it aloud to KLCC.
“Don't have my funeral in church," Stephen wrote. "Other than that, you send me off as you see fit. Funerals are for the living, not the dead. Don't spend a lot of money on it, though."
Stephen asked to be cremated, and to have his ashes spread at Zion National Park in Utah.
“‘And last thing, of course," he wrote. "I love you, madre. Goodbye.”
Deyo thanked the Crime Victims Fund, Eugene Police Detective Cliff Sites and all of the hospital staff that worked on her son.
Stephen Forrest was the fifth non-vehicular homicide in Eugene this year. Police said the suspect in his murder, Jaisi Tavin Savath, turned himself in last Wednesday.
