Police Blotter 11/15/10

Animosities lead to disturbances

There were a couple of unlikely criminal episodes in the neighborhood during the last two weeks, each apparently resulting from failed relationships, real or imagined. The most serious incident was reported by a resident of an apartment in the 4200 block of E. Blaine Street. According to the victim, at about 7 pm on 11/12, a woman pounded on the door of his apartment saying that she was there to pick up her friend, who was a former girlfriend of the victim. He admitted that his former girlfriend had been at his apartment, but he said she had left twenty minutes earlier. The woman, according to the victim, then became enraged and came into the apartment, where she assaulted him, yelling that he should stay out of her friend’s life as he was just “f---ing it up.” In the ensuing scuffle, which began in the living room, the victim was bit on the chest, he reported. The struggle then moved into in the kitchen, where the victim was “grabbed in the genitals” and his underwear ripped. When he reached for his cell phone to call the police, his assailant grabbed the phone and ran for the door. But before she could make it out of the apartment, he punched her in the gut and she dropped the phone, which he then used to make the call. When the police arrived, the victim showed them the bite to his chest, his bruised groin, and the ripped underwear. The man said he did not know the suspect’s name or address. But the alleged assailant later provided a clue to her identity by calling the victim on his cell phone to further chew him out, thereby inadvertently leaving her phone number on the victim’s phone for the police to follow up on. Quite a story, but only the first in this series.

The second incident involved a resident of the 2000 block of 43rd Avenue E. and occurred at 8:25 pm on 11/6. She reported that a man she knew arrived at her apartment to complain that she had had her ex-boyfriend over for drinks. The suspect entered her apartment and yelled at her, but was intoxicated and eventually left. The victim reported to the police that while she did know the man, he was not someone she had ever dated.

There was also a serious case of harassment reported this month. On 11/8 a Madison Park resident told police that his stepson was a victim of “cyber bullying.” He said that his stepson had been having an ongoing conversation with someone on Facebook whom he had never met. The Facebook messages had suddenly became hostile, however, to his both the stepson and the stepson’s girlfriend. The complainant reported, in fact, that the perpetrator had eventually sent this message: “Don’t kill yourself, because I want to be the one to hurt you.” This caused his stepson to experience a panic attack, the man stated. Although the perpetrator had given his “name” on Facebook, the police were unable to find anyone by that name in their databases.

Also during the last two weeks there were three cases of credit card fraud reported in the neighborhood. In one of the cases, a woman in Broadmoor told police that she had received a call from Chase Visa asking about a $1,200 charge that someone was attempting to make using her credit card in New England. She told Chase that the charge was not valid, so the Bank declined payment to the requesting merchant, cancelled her card and issued her a new one. Whether this and the other two local credit-card fraud cases were related to a recent flurry of such activity on Capitol Hill was not immediately clear. As reported recently by the Capitol Hill Seattle (CHS) blog, the Secret Service is investigating a case involving a Capitol Hill restaurant, where the credit card information of various patrons was apparently stolen. CHS reports that the restaurant is the Broadway Grill, which is not believed to have had any direct involvement in the thefts.

[Key to crime-map symbols: starbursts represent burglaries, solid cars represent car thefts, un-solid cars represent car prowls, spray-paint cans represent property damage, upraised hands represent shoplifting, dollar bills represent thefts, dollar signs represent credit card fraud, handcuffs represent arrests under warrants, black masks represent robberies, gloved fists represent assaults, and exclamation points represent cases of harassment. This map covers the period from October 28 through November 14.]