Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 10, October 2003

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

Cops 'n Robbers

By LEAH WEATHERSBY

Purse-snatcher procures PIN:

Sometime around 1:45 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 11, a woman's purse was stolen from her unlocked office in a Northgate-area building. The woman returned a short time later but didn't realize that her bag was gone until she received a telephone call from a man identifying himself as "Carl with Bank of America."

"Carl" told her the police had just arrested a suspect trying to use her debt card and officers would be contacting her. In the meantime, he said, he needed to verify her PIN number.

The woman gave "Carl" the code, but began to feel suspicious of him once she'd hung up the phone. She called Bank of America and told them to cancel her card. The bank told her they never ask for PIN numbers.

House vs. house:

Just after midnight on Friday, Sept. 12, police responded to reports of 15-20 people in a University District alley, fighting each other with shovels, sticks and fists. The battle was between some members of a local fraternity and residents of a rooming house across the alley.

Apparently the trouble started when someone from the boarding house (a man in his 20s) looked out and thought he saw someone in the fraternity house pushing or hitting a woman. Words were exchanged between residents of both houses and eventually a physical fight broke out.

At one point, the man from the boarding house saw one of his friends being held down by another man, and hit the man with a stick in order to get him off his friend. Then the man from the boarding house said he felt someone hit him in the back with either a shovel or a hockey stick.

The friend who had been pinned could not be located for questioning.

By the time police arrived, the fraternity member who had been hit by the stick had already been taken to the emergency room. When questioned at the hospital, the man said a guy had taken swings at him so he pinned him to the ground, holding him by the neck. That was when he felt the blow to his head by either a stick or board. He added that he was willing to assist with the prosecution in the event charges were filed.

Twice in one day:

At 6:45 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 11, a police officer was in the Crown Hill area when he spotted a man in his 40s sitting under a tree drinking what appeared to be alcohol from a can. The officer also recognized the suspect from an incident that occurred a week earlier when the suspect was spotted sitting in a stolen car.

The officer asked the suspect if he was drinking and he denied it. When the officer asked if the suspect remembered the prior incident, the suspect started laughing and said:

"I got caught in a stolen car twice that day!" He added that he had gone to jail after he was spotted driving a stolen vehicle.

While this conversation was going on, the officer noticed an open plastic bag on the ground that appeared to contain marijuana. The suspect explained that he needed to smoke "weed" because he has terminal cancer.

Nevertheless, the "weed" was taken into evidence.

Creepy acquaintance:

About three months ago, a woman in her late-teens made the casual acquaintance of a man (in his 40s) in Oregon. A month later, the man called the woman and said he was in Seattle. They went to lunch.

However, the woman noticed the man seemed to have some mental problems. In fact, she saw a notebook he kept with "murderer" written on the front, which contained information about famous serial killers. The man even told her that he had killed people.

Not surprisingly, the woman told the man she wanted nothing more to do with him.

Then in early September, the woman found the air had been let out of her tires. The next day, she found the tires slashed.

A few days later, the woman returned to her University District home at around 2 a.m. with a male friend. Once they were inside, the phone rang. It was the acquaintance from Oregon. He asked the woman if her companion was her new boyfriend and told her he knows where she lives and works. He told her he could kill her at anytime.

Later the woman found a note and some other personal items from the suspect in her mailbox.

On Sept. 11, the woman returned home at 8:45 a.m. to find the man outside her building carrying a "No Iraq War" sign. The woman rushed inside. Later, she saw the suspect had left more items, such as a note, a pen and a coupon on her car. She told police she is afraid of the suspect and said she thinks he may be hanging around in one of the buildings under construction near her home.

A family affair:

Back in June, a man in his 50s who had decided to move his family from New York to the Seattle area, purchased a home in Shoreline. He made a verbal agreement with his sister and her husband, who run a contracting business, to remodel the home, and paid about $60,000 up front.

At around 9:30 p.m. on Sept. 11, an argument broke out at the sister's Northwest Seattle home over extra expenses on the project. The sister presented her brother with an invoice for $12,000. She said he became enraged and told her he was going to hire someone to kill her.

Later, while reporting the incident to police, the woman first said her brother had no history of violence, but later said he had made similar comments to his son. She added that though her husband had not been in the room when the threat was made, he'd probably heard arguing.

When police questioned the brother about his sister's allegations, he laughed and said he'd refused to pay because the invoice wasn't itemized. He said he got the feeling his sister and brother-in-law would forcibly detain him if he tried to leave the house without paying. The brother said his sister's husband had been in the room the almost the whole time.

The police tried to question the husband, but were told that he did not speak fluent English. Through the 911 call center, the officers were able to put the husband on the phone with a translator. The translator told police that according to the husband, threats were made, but nothing so explicit as a contract killing.

When the results were relayed to the brother and sister both refuted this version of events, and questioned the translator's ability to understand the husband's dialect. The siblings finally agreed to sort out their problems in civil court.