My gal pal, a british woman who is considering the issue of firearms, since it was never an option to her before, was followed in a similar manner on a bus in Seattle. She came out unscathed.., this is one of the many reasons women should carry guns.

Police free man, arrest another in stabbing

by Nancy Montgomery
Seattle Times Snohomish County bureau
Authorities last week nabbed the wrong man in the stabbing and attempted rape of a Mountlake Terrace woman walking along a sidewalk late last month. Now they say they’ve got the right man.

A 28-year-old Shoreline man was being held yesterday in the Snohomish County Jail on suspicion of kidnapping, attempted first-degree murder and attempted first-degree rape in the Dec. 28 attack. Bail was set at $250,000.

The suspect was arrested Tuesday night after the woman identified him from a photo lineup and Mountlake Terrace police searched his home, obtaining more “evidence that further links him to this crime,” police Sgt. Mark Connor said. Connor declined to specify what evidence was found.

Charges were expected to be filed by tomorrow, Snohomish County Deputy Prosecutor Dave Kurtz said.

A 22-year-old Seattle man who had been arrested near the scene and booked into the jail Dec. 29 for the crimes was released Tuesday, Connor said. That fact was noted by the new suspect’s defense lawyer.

“How many people are going to be paraded in here?” public defender Jeff Kradel asked at a jail hearing for the Shoreline man. “(He) has the bad luck to finally be picked.”

The Shoreline man was identified by a bus driver to undercover officers riding the bus as the man who had ridden the same bus and exited at the same stop as the victim on the night she was attacked, Connor said.

It was Community Transit’s Route 610 bus, Connor said, which runs about every half-hour from Aurora Village in Shoreline to 148th Street Southwest in South Snohomish County.

The woman, 26, was returning home from her retail job in Seattle when she was attacked about 11:30 p.m. on a sidewalk of 220th Street Southwest a few blocks from her stop.

The attacker grabbed her from behind and stabbed her with a screwdriver, then dragged her to a parking garage. He stabbed her several times more, then left her on the parking-garage floor.

The woman, who later underwent surgery for a punctured lung, was able to walk to the street, where a motorist who saw her called 911 from a cell phone.

The woman was released from the hospital Dec. 31 and is recovering.

“She is a remarkable woman. She has a lot of healing to do, but she’s doing well,” Connor said.

Connor said the woman never identified the first suspect as her attacker. But he said police were justified in holding the man, who also apparently rode the 610 bus and was arrested by Lynnwood police hours after the attack, because of proximity to the crime and his own statements.

“He made statements that implicated him . . . out-of-context statements that made us all kind of raise our eyebrows,” Connor said, but did not elaborate.

But, Kurtz said, “As things bore out, it became apparent that he was not the guy.”