Top Shelf Stayed Open After Protests and a Robbery

Russell Ian Boggess pleaded guilty on July 8, 2026, to robbing Top Shelf Medicine in northeast Bend. The shop is the same Greenwood Avenue store former staff picketed in April 2024 over alleged owner misconduct.

Prosecutors said he tried to fire a 9 mm handgun twice, then struck a worker and ran out with a bag of marijuana. The people on the floor, not the owner named in those earlier signs, were the ones who got hit.

Handmade Signs on a Greenwood Sidewalk

On April 7, 2024, a Sunday, former workers stood outside Top Shelf Medicine with boards that read “More like bottom shelf” and “I got fired because I won’t date the owner.” They had been there three days.

Shey Z. Samson, a former associate, said the owner had offered her a place to stay while she was in a vulnerable stretch, then made romantic advances. She said she told him she was not interested, and that he then looked for a way to get her fired.

It’s not about me. It’s about standing up for how we are not financial transactions.

Shey Z. Samson, former Top Shelf Medicine associate, April 7, 2024

Samson said she had liked the work anyway. She wanted someone to notice how the shop treated people who were not a date and not a line item. Fellow former coworkers joined her, including the general manager who had hired her.

Amanda Lawrence, that former general manager, said the owner, identified only as David, had resisted the hire from the start.

When I originally hired on Shey, David had told me that he didn’t want to hire on Shey because he wanted to date her.

Amanda Lawrence, former general manager, Top Shelf Medicine

Lawrence said she later walked out after the owner pressed her to fire Samson. None of those claims was tested in a public hearing that week. They sat on a sidewalk in Bend, on handmade signs, in front of a licensed cannabis shop that stayed open through the protest.

What the Owner Recanted After Two Hours

The lock trouble started on March 30, 2024. Samson’s job included closing. The owner fired her, she and others said, after she failed to secure the doors following a closing shift, a duty that had been hers. The lock was later fixed.

That is a clean paper trail if you are an at-will employer in Oregon. A missed close. A broken lock. A termination. Samson’s account puts a refused advance in front of that paper. Lawrence’s account puts the owner’s dating interest in front of the hire itself.

David agreed to sit for questions the day of the protest, then called back about two hours later and took the answers back, citing advice from a lawyer. That recant is the last on-the-record word from the owner in the public file of the dispute. No civil finding, no OLCC order, and no named lawsuit turned up around those specific claims.

A sidewalk cannot compel a deposition. A cannabis license also does not turn on whether a boss asked someone out. That gap is the rest of this story. The shop kept its address. The workers who remained kept the counter, the close, and, a few months later, a gun.

Coworkers Put the Gunman in a Headlock

On the afternoon of July 23, 2024, Bend police were called to Top Shelf Medicine in the 800 block of Northeast Greenwood Avenue. Communications manager Sheila Miller said an employee had called 911 after being threatened with a handgun, struck in the face, and watching a man walk out with a bag of marijuana.

Miller said the suspect tried to fire two shots at that employee and the handgun malfunctioned. Other workers put him in a headlock and held him until officers arrived in less than a minute. Two of those workers were injured while they restrained him. Officers used a WRAP device, took him to Bend Police headquarters, then to St. Charles Bend, and booked him into the Deschutes County jail.

Police identified him as Russell Ian Boggess, then 41, of Bend. The jail list that night included attempted murder, first-degree robbery, and a felon-in-possession count, among a dozen initial charges. That was the state booking. The case that stuck was federal.

THE GREENWOOD ROBBERY, IN BRIEF

• The weapon: A 9 mm handgun that prosecutors say jammed twice when Boggess tried to fire it.
• The take: A bag of marijuana carried out the door before workers grabbed him.
• The injuries: The 911 caller was struck in the face, Miller said; two coworkers were hurt holding him.
• The plea: On July 8, 2026, Boggess, then 43, pleaded guilty to the Greenwood robbery and to using a firearm in a crime of violence.

U.S. Attorney Scott E. Bradford’s office said Boggess struck an employee in the head with the gun after that worker tried to call police, then fled with the stolen cannabis. Witnesses outside the store subdued him and held the firearm until law enforcement arrived. A federal grand jury in Eugene had returned a three-count indictment on September 19, 2024, adding a felon-in-possession-of-ammunition count that was not part of the July 8, 2026 plea.

The robbery count carries up to 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release. The firearm count carries a mandatory minimum of seven years, consecutive to any other sentence, a maximum of life, another $250,000 fine, and five years of supervised release. Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Nelson and Assistant U.S. Attorney William M. McLaren are prosecuting. The FBI and Bend Police are on the investigation. Sentencing is set for October 7, 2026.

THE GREENWOOD AVENUE TIMELINE

1. March 30, 2024: Lock trouble begins at Top Shelf Medicine; Samson is later fired after a close.
2. April 7, 2024: Former staff protest on the sidewalk; the owner recants an interview after two hours.
3. July 23, 2024: Boggess robs the shop, tries to fire twice, and is held by coworkers until police arrive.
4. September 19, 2024: A federal grand jury in Eugene returns a three-count indictment.
5. November 5, 2024: Oregon voters approve Measure 119, a cannabis labor-peace mandate.
6. December 5, 2024: Measure 119 takes effect for OLCC applicants and renewals.
7. May 20, 2025: The U.S. District Court for Oregon permanently blocks enforcement.
8. December 2, 2025: General manager Bila Ahmedian is collecting signatures to put dispensaries on a Prineville ballot.
9. July 8, 2026: Boggess pleads guilty to the robbery and the firearm count.
10. October 7, 2026: Federal sentencing is scheduled.

The protest was about power inside the shop. The robbery was about who stands at the glass when a gun comes through the door. Both landed on the same payroll.

Cannabis Labor Peace Lasted Until May 2025

Seven months after the Greenwood protest, Oregon voters were asked whether cannabis licensees should have to show the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission a signed labor peace agreement, or an attestation that they already had one, in order to get or renew a license. Measure 119, written as a way to keep bosses from blocking union talk, passed on November 5, 2024.

Certified statewide results recorded 1,166,425 yes votes, or 56.74 percent, and 889,265 no votes, or 43.26 percent, on 2,055,690 ballots. Deschutes County, home to Bend, voted yes at 54 percent and no at 46 percent on 116,200 ballots.

MEASURE 119, CERTIFIED SHARES

The measure took effect on December 5, 2024. There was no carve-out for a shop that had never met a union, which meant a licensee had to find a bona fide labor organization if it wanted the piece of paper OLCC would demand. UFCW Local 555 had backed the campaign after a legislative version stalled. Dan Clay, president of the local, said workers in every industry should have the freedom to unionize if they choose.

Two companies sued state officials. On May 20, 2025, five months and 15 days after the effective date, the U.S. District Court for Oregon permanently prohibited those officials from enforcing Measure 119. The court held that federal labor law preempted the measure and that it violated the companies’ First Amendment rights. In that same analysis, the court held that the National Labor Relations Act likely applies to the cannabis businesses in the case.

OLCC stopped requiring labor peace agreements for applications and renewals. Whatever leverage a Bend clerk might have hoped to gain from a license hanging on union neutrality lasted less than half a year. The Greenwood protest had already come and gone without that lever. The clerks who tackled Boggess never had it either.

Where a Harassment Complaint Goes in Oregon

OLCC still licenses the shop and the people who sell inside it. It does not run a dating-and-firing court. The commission’s own marijuana worker permit denial rules tell you what it actually screens: age 21 or older; recent felonies for drugs, violence, dishonesty, or firearms; prior marijuana-license or permit revocations; false statements to the commission. A refused advance is not on that list. A bad close can still get you fired. It will not, by itself, pull a worker permit.

When the commission published OLCC’s 2026 marijuana rule changes, the agenda was notarized property-owner consent, producer-to-producer transfers, school buffers, trade samples, manifests, labels, and motion-activated cameras. That is inventory, geography, and video. It is not a human-resources file.

WHO REGULATES WHICH PROBLEM

• OLCC licenses: Product tracking, cameras, school distance, worker permits for age and certain crimes.
• Shop managers: Hiring, firing, closing duties, and whatever in-house complaint process they bother to run.
• BOLI and the EEOC: Discrimination and federal rules on workplace harassment, on a civil timeline, not a license clock.
• Criminal courts: The jammed gun, the headlock, the plea, and the October 7, 2026 sentencing.

Cannabis clerks are still employees. Title VII and Oregon civil-rights statutes did not vanish because the product is marijuana. A worker can still walk a harassment or retaliation claim into BOLI or the EEOC. That path is slow, mostly private, and it does not automatically darken the OPEN sign. Measure 119 was the attempt to put labor neutrality on the same form as the license. That attempt is dead. The sidewalk protest never had a form at all.

So the second hit, after the signs came down, was structural. A small Bend retailer can absorb a weekend of cardboard, recant an interview, and keep selling. The people on the schedule absorb the close, the gun, and the gap between a civil complaint and a regulator who is counting cameras.

A Petition Drive in a Town With No Dispensary

On December 2, 2025, Bila Ahmedian, then the general manager of Top Shelf Medicine in Bend, was in Prineville collecting names. About 5 percent to 10 percent of the shop’s customers came from that town, Ahmedian said, many of them using cannabis for pain, and the closest shop meant a 60-mile round trip.

Ahmedian had a petition to allow Prineville dispensaries online and on paper at local smoke shops. The threshold cited was 760 signatures. The count at that point was 280 and rising, Ahmedian said, with no firm deadline, aimed at a future local ballot. “That’s just a great way of bringing people together and deciding what we want, because at the end of the day, the people have the power,” Ahmedian said.

Karl Wilkerson, husband of the owner of Dad’s Place in Prineville, opposed putting a dispensary in town. Chris Hanshew, whose wife is a cancer survivor, wanted one closer for pain. That is ordinary small-city cannabis politics. It is also a portrait of a shop that, 20 months after former staff called it “bottom shelf,” still had a manager on the road asking a neighboring city for more stores.

Retail listings in 2026 still pointed buyers to 815 NE Greenwood Avenue. The federal plea in July 2026 still named the same Greenwood block as the crime scene. The owner’s last public move in the 2024 dispute was to unsay an interview. The workers’ last public move on that sidewalk was a set of signs. The state’s last public move on cannabis labor peace was a permanent injunction.

Boggess is due to be sentenced on October 7, 2026, in federal court. Samson’s boards are gone from the pavement. The OPEN sign on Greenwood is the part of this file that never recanted.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of public statements, police accounts, court announcements, election results, and agency rules. It is informational only and is not legal advice, not a finding that any uncharged workplace claim is true or false, and not a prediction of any sentence or civil outcome. Readers who believe they have a workplace or injury claim should consult an Oregon employment lawyer or contact the Bureau of Labor and Industries or the EEOC before acting. Figures, charges, plea terms, and operating details reflect the public sources named here and can change with later filings, a sentence on October 7, 2026, or new agency action.