Dori: Man bailed out twice now charged in attempted stabbing of 8-year-old in Tacoma

Thanks to $7,000 provided by the Northwest Community Bail Fund, a Tacoma man was free to walk the streets of the city Saturday, where he was arrested for trying to stab an 8-year-old girl in the head while she was running errands with her mother.

The girl’s mom, Victoria Poteet, came on The Dori Monson Show on Tuesday to describe their harrowing event “with the hopes of laws being changed.”

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Poteet describes riding the bus with her two children, ages 8 and 3, before disembarking near the corner of Pacific Highway South and 72nd Avenue South, north of Parkland.

“As soon as I got off the bus, this random guy came out from nowhere,” Poteet told Dori and his listeners. “It was terrifying. He was screaming profanities at me and my children. I knew that he was not right in his head, so I started walking away from him.”

That is when the young mom realized her daughter was not at her side.

“When I turned to look to see where my daughter was, he had grabbed by her jacket and he has about an 8-inch blade, and he’s bent forward to stab my daughter,” she recalled. “Her bending down and lunging forward is what saved her, and he missed.”

Poteet says she and her children ran, screaming and crying, while bystanders chased the alleged attacker into a nearby Fred Meyer parking lot, and employees at a nearby Jiffy Lube sheltered the family.

“Thank God for all the kind citizens of Tacoma, and thank God for Jiffy Lube,” Poteet wrote.

On Monday, Anthony DeShawn Rickerson, 31, was charged in Pierce County Superior Court with first-degree assault and unlawful imprisonment in connection with the attack on Poteet’s daughter. He is being held on no bail in Pierce County Jail while undergoing a competency evaluation.

According to the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office, Rickerson was also charged – but later freed on bail by the Northwest Community Bail Fund – for a November 2021 incident involving second-degree burglary and third-degree theft, and a December third-degree assault case involving a screwdriver attack in a Tacoma parking lot.

“When is enough, enough? When can my children and I feel safe to walk down the street and take a bus to the store without being attacked by a mental junkie? When will laws change to keep these mentally unstable drug addicts off the street?” Poteet wrote to Dori. “Today I almost lost my daughter because of it! I just want to raise awareness and be heard! We, as the people, need to stand up and say ‘enough is enough.’”

Dori went on to interview Pierce County Prosecutor Mary Robnett about bail projects that allow such cases to occur.

Listen to Dori’s entire interview with Tacoma mom Victoria Poteet:

Hear Dori’s follow-up interview with Pierce County Prosecutor Mary Robnett:

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.