Seattle woman’s advice after confronting roadside van, suffering injuries

Seattle resident Cynthia Nelson learned a lesson earlier this month: what can happen when you confront occupiers of a nuisance van with a hammer. And while she initially considered her lesson a cautionary tale, she’s not so sure anymore.

“I can’t answer that,” she said. “I have no idea if I would do it again.”

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Nelson told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Monday that she and her neighbors on Stone Avenue in the Oak Tree neighborhood attempted to call the police multiple times over the course of a few weeks after continually finding hypodermic needles surrounding a van that never seemed to leave its roadside parking spot.

Without any response from the authorities, Nelson “lost it.”

“When I finally just lost it last Thursday, the 10th of March, I looked out and there was urine-soaked garbage, clothing, garbage, used needles and there was no one in the front seat,” she said.

Nelson says she walked up to the van and shouted so the occupants could hear her. She warned them to “get the hell out of our neighborhood,” but nobody answered. So she grabbed a hammer from her house.

“I came back to my house and grabbed a hammer and broke out both of the front side windows,” she said. “Just the side windows, not the windshield.”

Dori asked if Nelson was afraid of the potential repercussions of the windshield bashing.

“At that point, no,” she responded.

Nelson’s memory is murky from that point on. Breaking the windows of the van is the last thing she remembers clearly.

The next moment she can recall is waking up on her front stoop with the paramedics and her neighbors nearby. Nelson said her mother saw her crawling on the ground in front of the house and that a passerby called 911.

“I thought I’d fallen,” she said. “I don’t remember being blindsided and hit in my face.”

The speculation is that Nelson was assaulted, however, she cannot remember what happened, and cannot remember being attacked.

Nelson said she suffered an inter-cranial fracture. She got a staple in her head from when she hit the gravel in front of her house.

“You can’t get an inter-cranial bleed from falling on the sidewalk,” she said, noting that doctors told her that her injuries were consistent with an attack. “I don’t think I could do this damage to my face if I just fell.”

Nelson said an unknown passerby called 911 to report that something happened around the van.

The van is still at its spot, Nelson said. Seattle Police Department has not made any arrests and are investigating the incident. Paramedics and the fire department responded after 911 was called for Nelson’s injuries. Police, Nelson said, did not respond that night. She said they showed up a few days after the incident and gave her a case number.

KIRO 7 reported that it found a black van two blocks away with windows and windshield shattered but nobody responded. Nelson told KIRO 7 that she would advise others not to take her approach to confrontation.

“Don’t take it into your own hands,” she told KIRO 7 on Friday. “Because it’s not the best thing to do.”

Seattle police Det. Patrick Michaud advises the public against following Nelson’s lead, noting that it’s a dangerous situation and also illegal to cause damage to someone else’s property.

“Honestly don’t,” he said. “Don’t put yourself in a situation where you might find yourself injured … It’s not an acceptable way to solve this problem. Call us so we can try to mediate the problem so everybody can find a way home that day.”