The following are selected reports from the Seattle Police Department’s West Precinct. They represent the officers’ accounts of the events described.
Panhandled
At 2:59 p.m. on April 21, a man flagged down a police officer in the 500 block of Queen Anne Avenue North.
The man said he had just been punched in the face by a panhandler after he refused to give him money.
Witnesses said they’d seen the panhandler swinging his cane at the victim.
Police spoke with the panhandler, who was apparently drunk and agitated. Once he calmed down, they identified him and let him go with a warning.
Fountain of oops
On April 20 at 2:40 a.m., police received a 911 call from security at the Pacific Science Center at the Seattle Center. Security reported they had watched a man scale the 10-foot-high iron fence surrounding the fountain; they pulled him out of the fountain and detained him.
Security reported that people often scale the fence at night to try to fish coins out of the fountain.
When police responded, the man told them he’d gotten locked inside the Science Center property and had been trying to get out when security stopped him. When the officers asked him why his shoes and socks were wet, he’d admitted that he’d been trying to get coins out of the fountain to support his drug addiction.
Police identified him and let him go.
Opportunistic thieves
At 3:55 a.m. on April 19, police were called about two male suspects wearing black hoodies who had been spotted in the 3400 block of 33rd Avenue West trying car doors. The 911 caller stated that the suspects got into a vehicle and drove away.
While en route to this call, a second 911 call came from a home in the 3800 block of 35th Avenue West, stating that the home had been broken into while the homeowners were in bed.
The victims said they woke up to their dog barking. When they went to investigate, they discovered the front door ajar and a TV, a camera and a media player missing.
They looked out a window and heard a car starting driving away southbound on 35th Avenue; the vehicle was similar to the one in the previous incident.
The victim then said they heard someone open the front door before the dog started barking and then heard someone walking around the living room and flushing the toilet.
They did not say why they didn’t go up to see who was in their house.
After leaving, the officers went to the 3400 block of 33rd Avenue West and didn’t find any prowled cars.
In a possibly related incident, a man in the 2500 block of 30th Avenue West called 911 on the morning of April 19, after he woke up to find his door open and his laptop computer, video-game console and bongs were gone.
He said he fell asleep at 2:30 a.m., and when he woke up at 7:30 a.m., the door was open and his belongings were gone.
Stolen jerseys
Police responded to a 911 call reporting a burglary at a home in the 500 block of West Mercer Street at 9:03 p.m. on April 18.
The victim said he was certain he had locked the deadbolt on his front door when he left for work at 4:45 a.m., but the door was unlocked when he returned. He entered and discovered that two laptop computers, an expired passport, a copy of his birth certificate and about a dozen souvenir sports jerseys were missing.
Police couldn’t find any signs of forced entry to the house and couldn’t determine any way that the burglar could have entered, aside from the front door.
Road rage
On April 29 at 3:12 p.m., police responded to a 911 call reporting a road rage incident in the area of Elliott Avenue and West Denny Way, in which both drivers had gotten out of their cars in the intersection and one driver pulled out a knife.
The victim called 911 while driving away from the incident and met police at South Atlantic Street and Colorado Avenue South. He said he’d been driving southbound on Elliott when he stopped at a red light and was almost rear-ended by the car behind him.
After the light turned green, the suspect pulled up next to the victim’s vehicle, and the two drivers yelled at each other.
At the next red light, the suspect was stopped behind the victim. He got out of his car and approached the driver’s side of the victim’s vehicle, telling the victim to “be a man” and get out and fight him. The victim opened his door to push the suspect away and noticed he had a hunting knife in hand.
After seeing the knife, the victim got back into his vehicle and shut the door, quickly driving southbound onto the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The suspect followed him to the end of the viaduct and then took the Atlantic Street exit.
The suspect continued driving eastbound, while the vehicle pulled over to wait for police.
The driver and his passengers gave police descriptions of the driver and his car, as well as his license plate number. They also said there was a baby in a carseat in the back of the suspect’s car.