Ballard police

Woman tries to steal backpack

By Dean Wong

A parent called 911 to report that someone had tried to grab her son by his backpack in the lobby of an elementary school in Ballard last week. The suspect dragged the boy four feet, by hanging onto the loop at the top of the bag. The boy managed to get away. When the police arrived, the boy said the suspect was probably a woman, but he wasn’t sure since he was unable to see the face. The suspect was wearing a long black coat and green pants. The incident took place as school was letting out and numerous parents and children were inside the lobby of the building. The suspect left the lobby and was last seen leaving the area past some school buses.

It was 5:30 a.m. when a Ballard man got out of bed to get a drink of water. He heard the sound of someone leaving his basement door. He went to investigate and noticed X-Box and Playstation counsels gone, along with two rental movies. One of the counsels had been in the living room and the other in the basement. He told police his dog usually barks when people come near the house, but did not this time.

A daughter who lives in a separate out-building in her parent’s backyard, spent the night asleep on a couch in the main house. In the morning she found her outside apartment burglarized. The suspect had climbed on a bag of mulch and used it to gain access to a window. An iPod and Macintosh computer were stolen.

Around 1 a.m., a Ballard woman was just turning off the lights in her home when she heard noises outside. At first she thought it may have been her neighbors, then realized the sound was coming from her front porch. She looked through the blinds and saw a pair of bare legs facing the window. It appeared the suspect was trying to pull the screen off of the window. The woman turned the porch light on and off to scare the suspect away. A two-officer police unit was sent and one officer got out on foot a block away. As the foot officer got closer to the house, he saw a man and woman on the street near the house. They said they were not the ones to call 911, then pointed to a nude male standing near the front door of a house. The officer asked the naked man to come down from the porch and talk to him, but he quickly left and ran up an alley. He got away.

A North Seattle man was walking his dog on a leash when a pit bull charged at him. “He said he pulled the pit bull off of his dog and tried to hold it down. When he did this he was bitten on the left ring finger by the pit bull. He continued to try and hold it down, but the dog was finally able to get free of his grip and run away,” the officer said in his report. The owner of the pit bull called the police and said her dog had jumped a five-foot fence and ran away. An Animal Control Officer was called to investigate.

A 36-year-old man was walking down Market Street at night when he walked in front of a guy with a video taping with a television camera. The cameraman got angry, they exchanged some words and the guy with the camera pushed the man against a wall. During the scuffle the victim said he did not fight back, but dropped his wallet. After being pushed against the wall, the victim threatened to beat the man’s “rear end” and break his camera. The cameraman threw his camera into a black Jeep Cherokee and fled.

Late one evening a Northeast Seattle woman heard a noise outside her front door. She did not investigate right away, thinking the noise came from construction on Interstate 5. An hour later, she noticed a strange object on her window next to the door. Blue tape was attached to the window, holding up some fireworks that had ignited. Upon further investigation, she found four to five firecrackers taped together along with some bottle rockets. All but two of the fireworks had exploded, leaving a burn mark on the window.

A local woman was out of town when her book of new checks arrived in the mailbox. When she came back from her trip, she went to the bank to deposit some money and was told the account was on hold. Apparently an identity thief had stolen the checks and was going around town cashing them. Now the woman is receiving collection notices. The checks were used at a drug store ($127.66), second hand store ($124.86), grocery store ($77.99) and $122.67 at an unspecified location.

A police officer made contact with a mentally ill female at a mini-mart. She had been walking into traffic and had fallen into a ditch. When she was contacted, the woman was stumbling around the parking lot and was bleeding on the left side of her face. “The victim was extremely intoxicated and was having difficulty in simply standing up while I spoke with her. I asked the victim if she was ok, and she replied that she was just trying to get to her North Ballard home from this University District location. She had trouble standing up and fell forward on the hood of the patrol car. She was transported to Northwest Hospital for treatment.