Dori: Woman in wheelchair attacked in Seattle by naked, prolific offender
Nov 22, 2021, 2:42 PM | Updated: Nov 23, 2021, 8:50 am
Stacie, pictured here on a ferry with the Seattle skyline behind her.
A Gig Harbor woman with a physical disability – in Seattle to buy a new pair of shoes and go to a doctor’s appointment – reached out to the Dori Monson Show after a disturbing incident occurred during her recent visit: “I know I make this wheelchair life look glamorous and fun, but on Friday I was targeted and assaulted.”
Stacie, who is afraid to share her last name with a larger audience, describes a midday attack she suffered near Third Avenue and Pike Street in downtown Seattle while waiting to cross the street.
“A naked woman started screaming at me and started hitting me with her jacket,” Stacie said. “I had my hair on top of my head in a bun, and she grabbed it, whaling my head back and forth into my wheelchair.”
“She had pants on, but they were falling off,” Stacie described. “She didn’t have anything on top. … It was [as if I were in the] Twilight Zone.”
Coming to her rescue, Stacie’s husband managed to throw the mostly naked woman to the ground – but that provoked the attacker’s “colleagues,” she recalls, “and they didn’t like that.”
Stacie has flashbacks about what might have happened to them both if Seattle police hadn’t arrived so quickly.
Stacie says she has since learned from a victims’ advocate that her attacker’s criminal history includes 57 arrests since 2000. Her most recent 2021 arrest remains open because the alleged attacker failed to appear at her competency hearing.
“What’s infuriating is that a group is trying to bail her out,” Stacie said. “If they bail her out, what is her incentive to show up for trial?”
“I know she targeted me,” the Gig Harbor woman believes.
Her husband called the incident “like a dog who spotted a rabbit,” adding that “people in wheelchairs are so vulnerable from behind.”
Stacie appreciates the Seattle police and the kindness of people at Café Nordstrom who responded shortly after the attack, but says, “I haven’t felt safe since. My neck is sore and I can’t sleep. When did it not become OK to go out in public?”
Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.
