Assault victim: Lived in NY, ‘never felt unsafe’ until moving to Seattle

A Seattle resident named Kristine says she was attacked during a break-in at her condo building in Greenwood. She’s lived in the New York area and Chicago, but says she never felt unsafe until moving to Seattle.

“So this event happened 10 days before Christmas last year,” she told the Dori Monson Show on KIRO Radio. “What happened was my partner and I were woken up at about 12:45 a.m. by one of my dogs, actually, who was going crazy, which is pretty out of character. And so we we bolted out of bed. Outside my dining room window, you could see the back door of my building, and my partner Todd looked out and saw just tons of stuff being stockpiled out there,” she said. “So it was pretty obvious that we were being robbed at the time.”

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“He went to investigate, and he actually found someone in the building and chased him out of the building, and ran for several blocks until a car pulled around and picked that person up and drove away,” she continued.

She walked around to assess the damage and see what was stolen, and found that there was still someone in the condo building.

“I asked this woman to leave and she started yelling at me,” Kristine said. ‘And what made me even more upset was that she kept saying over and over how there was nothing I could do about it, that even if she were to be arrested — which she felt like she wouldn’t be — that she would just be let go. And it was no problem, that she could do whatever she wanted.”

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“We kind of got in an argument, and I kind of chased her down the stairs and she went out the back of the building,” she added. “And like I said earlier, there was all of the belongings of different residents here, out the back door. So when we got to the bottom, there must have been a suitcase, … and as she was about to leave the building, she grabs it, picked it up and threw it at me. And it hit me right between the eyes, so I had to get 13 stitches.”

Kristine says this is the third break-in within a six month period, and says the current state of the city and the lack of police presence make her feel unsafe living in Seattle.

“This building has been has been broken into multiple times, and I have called the police and they won’t come. They won’t come in unless you’re hurt,” she said. “They did come that night after I called them because I was injured.”

“I’ve lived in most major U.S. cities, grew up in the New York area. I lived in Chicago for a long time before moving here, and these are known violent cities. But I have never felt unsafe until I lived here. And it’s because there’s no police presence around.”

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