UW parent distraught over university, police response to sexual assault

Seattle Police (SPD) are currently investigating a man caught on surveillance video stalking residents near the University of Washington (UW) before entering a house and assaulting a student.

Officers received a call from residents of the house in the 4700 block of 18th Avenue Northeast after the intruder awakened them at 5:00 a.m. When officers arrived, they reviewed surveillance footage and searched the area, but were unable to find the suspect.

“This man broke into the house they live in. She lives with 10 other girls, seniors that are at the University of Washington,” said Eric, a father of one of the student’s roommates, on the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH. “He woke her up shirtless with stuff hanging out of his pants, as you can imagine, scared her, woke her up. She yelled, caused a little commotion. He pulled a gun on her, put a gun to her head, made her lay on her stomach and started the process of doing some really bad stuff to her.”

One of the other roommates was hiding in her room, locked behind another door, when she called 911 with SPD at the scene within minutes.

A former student currently living in the same area even believes the person who broke into the house in the U-District over the weekend is the same person who targeted her own home multiple times this year, according to KIRO 7.

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The former student, who chose to remain anonymous, said the man tried to break into her home twice, once toward the end of May, then again in July.

“Absolutely, my daughter could have been the one with a gun to her head and it scares the s*** out of me,” Eric said. “I mean, I’m angry. I’m sad. I want to yell, I want to scream and cry. I want to do all those things right now. I’m very, very frustrated and angry.”

Eric followed up on this incident with the mayor, claiming he never heard a response back.

“I’ve left a message for a lot of different entities,” Eric said.

Among the parties contacted were the UW police chief, the SPD, SPD’s North Precinct captain, and multiple UW academic leads. Eric also reached out to Utah Police, who work with local authorities on patrolling the campus’ Greek system.

“I left a message, a very detailed, specific, professional, polite, respectful, but very adamant email to [the president of UW],” Eric said. “And I did receive an email back from her chief of staff, not the president directly. And the response to me felt like a cut-and-paste email. Kind of placating me, there were a couple of suggestions within the email that I thought was very reactive.

“But really, there’s been very limited response from the University of Washington,” Eric continued.

According to KIRO 7, the former student who believed she encountered the same suspect earlier in the year reportedly filed a police report over the attempted break-in, but still has not heard back from police either.

Eric stated on the Jason Rantz Show that 25 registered sex offenders are within a half-mile radius of his daughter’s house.

“That makes me sick and that makes me sad and also ashamed to look in the mirror, quite honestly, because I should have known this as a protective father,” Eric said. “And literally, there is a halfway house across the street from where my daughter lives that has eight registered sex offenders living there. And that concerns me and scares me.”

After the creation of the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) in 2020, followed by the New York Times’ exposé on Black police officers being the target of racist insults and harassment at UW, the campus has become a central local figure in the “Defund the Police” movement.

“Since June 2020, hundreds of organizations and over 10,000 members of the UW community have signed on to our demands to decriminalize UW, disarm and defund UWPD, and invest those resources in our Black, Indigenous and People of Color at UW Seattle,” the organization, Decriminalize UW, wrote in a post.

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“I will tell you, there are a lot of kids who initially thought the ‘Defund the Police’ scenario was going to be the right way to go. It’s turning and I’ve got 11 girls in the house who are all thinking very different ways to approach things right now,” Eric said. “There’s an internal movement within the University of Washington that I think is happening for the better.”

Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday afternoons from 3 – 6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here.