Seattle Press on Line

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By Sara Longley

Nov 30, 2000 -- A 19-year-old woman shops at a University Village store. After a while she leaves, tripping the theft alarm as she exits the store. An employee approaches and sees her discard a bottle of bubble bath, which she has not paid for. The employee escorts the girl to the store office, and on the way the suspect attempts to get rid of a sweater, also not paid for, which she has hidden under her clothes. The store employee retrieves the sweater and calls police. The young woman, whose record is very clean, is investigated and released from the scene...

* * *

A congregation is gathered in a University District church for Sunday evening Mass. During the service, a man in his late 20s stands up and begins to address the congregation regarding the pope. A member of the congregation walks over and asks him not to disrupt the Mass. However, the man continues to speak. The priest asks him to leave but he refuses. Two more of the flock escort the man out. After he is outside, the man pushes his way back to the door of the church, and the two church members begin to struggle with him. Another man sees the commotion and assists them in restraining the man. Police arrive and escort the man off church property, giving him a criminal trespass warning not to come back. The suspect and the third man are both injured slightly in the scuffle but refuse medical attention...

* * *

A woman babysits a toddler at her home in Laurelhurst on a Monday afternoon. She steps out onto the back porch at about 2:30 p.m. to smoke a cigarette. The child accompanies her but stays inside, behind the sliding glass door. Suddenly the glass door shatters with explosive force, sending shards of glass into the wall and onto the hair of the little girl. Luckily, nobody is hurt. The baby sitter discovers the cause of the damage, a potato, on the floor.

Soon the child's father arrives at the baby sitter's house. He then pays a visit to an adjacent house whose back yard is the apparent source of the potato, noting that there is a clear line of sight from the sitter's back porch to the neighbor's over the back yard fence. At the neighbor's house he encounters two teenage boys. They deny shooting a potato gun across the fence, saying they have been playing computer games. The victim's father returns to the baby sitter's house and calls police.

Officer Kim arrives and assesses the scene, taking pictures of the damage, then goes to the house where the potato seems to have come from. He finds only one boy there and immediately cuts to the chase, asking the youngster if he owns a potato gun. The boy tells him he does, and says the officer can have it if he wants. The officer then asks if he has fired the gun that day, and the boy says no. When asked the name of his friend who left, the boy mumbles a name but says he doesn't know how to reach him. He then says he only arrived home at 3 p.m. and could not have fired the gun. He does admit that there are potatoes in the house.

Officer Kim is able to find the second boy's father by using a phone book. Father lectures son and, a short time later, the second boy is on the phone with Officer Kim while the first boy listens to the conversation. The second boy admits they were playing with the potato gun in the back yard. He says they meant to shoot it into the back fence, but the shot went high and flew over the fence instead. The second boy claims that the first boy told him nothing had happened, so he didn't know anything was wrong. He says he would like to apologize in person to the victim.

When the officer hangs up, the first boy comes forward and apologizes for lying. He says that he, too, wants to apologize to the victim. The two boys are taken to the babysitter's house, where they apologize. By now the father of the first boy is home, and Officer Kim fills him in on the afternoon's events. The father says the potato gun was made out of parts purchased at Home Depot. The potato gun, about five feet long and made of PVC pipe, is placed into evidence...

* * *

Two employees of a fast-food restaurant on Lake City Way Northeast become involved in a violent disagreement on a Monday evening at 5:30 p.m., apparently over who is in charge of the french fry area. When police arrive, only one combatant is still on the premises. He claims that the other man pushed him into the fryer. He pushed back, and then the other man punched him twice in the face, causing a bloody nose and swollen eye. The injured fry cook refuses medical attention. Attempts to locate the other employee to get his side of the story are unsuccessful...

* * *

The manager of a North Seattle coffee shop arrives at work on a Monday morning at 4 a.m. and finds the door is hard to unlock. When she gets it open, she finds that the jamb has been pried off of the door frame. Inside the shop, the safe door is barely open, just enough so that it is not latched. She counts the money, and it is all there. Nothing seems to be missing or disturbed, and she is left wondering whether anyone broke in at all...

* * *

A young man pulls his car into the parking lot of a Lake City fast food restaurant at 1:45 a.m. on a Monday morning. He produces a jar of raspberry jam and shouts, "This is what you get for throwing change at my girl!" With that, he heaves the jam jar at the walk-up window, breaking a large section of glass. He then drives away and disappears...

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