Cruising for crime in Seattle’s Volunteer Park?

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A recent robbery with some strange circumstances in Seattle’s Volunteer Park has prompted an unexpected and unwanted lesson in illicit sex for Dave, courtesy of (no surprise) Luke.

It caught Dave’s attention because it happened in the middle of the day, when the Seattle Police Department says “the victim (a Renton man) was driving through the park when an unknown male (the suspect) waived him down. When the victim stopped his car to see what the suspect wanted, the suspect opened the passenger door and got into the car.

The suspect pulled out a black revolver and robbed the victim of his cash. The suspect then fled through the park on foot. Responding officers were unable to locate the suspect, who remains at large. The victim was not injured.”

Dave seemed shocked such a thing could happen to an innocent person just driving through the park in broad daylight and worried this could be the start of a troubling trend. But Luke suspected the victim wasn’t so innocent after all. That’s because Volunteer Park is a well known hangout for gay men trying to procure sex from other willing participants, a practice known in a certain parlance as “cruising.”

To no one’s surprise, Luke gleefully provides Dave a primer on the ongoing and controversial comings and goings, and why he shouldn’t sit in his car reading the paper alone in the park (as he has been known to do at times.)

Listen to Luke schools Dave on cruising in Volunteer Park

Despite a massive manhunt, police were unable to locate the suspect. He’s described as a thin-built white male in his 30?s, six feet tall, with stringy brown hair, a goatee, bad teeth and wearing a green shirt and baseball cap. But it didn’t take a massive APB to turn up listeners who confirmed Luke’s account of the happenings, and provided some extra details.

Listen to The Magic Mailbag-Listeners detail illicit sex practices in Volunteer Park

I checked with SPD and they are looking into the overall crime stats for the area and whether there’s a new crime trend in the area, or this is just an isolated incident (since many crimes like this are likely to go unreported because of the obvious embarrassment.)

Josh Kerns-97.3 KIRO FM