SEATTLE — A 32-year-old woman was arrested late Tuesday in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood after police say she attacked a security guard with a machete.
Police said the security guard, 50, was patrolling near the 1600 block of 12th Avenue near the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct around 11:20 p.m. when the woman began yelling at him from a car
Witnesses told police the woman got out of the car with a nerf gun, approached the guard, and asked if he was an officer.
Police said the guard was wearing a vest with the word “officer” printed on the front and back. When he walked away, police said the woman continued to insult him before she went back to the car and grabbed the machete.
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According to police, the woman walked toward the guard and witness while she was holding the machete. They both then tried to enter the lobby of a nearby apartment building to get away.
When the guard tried to pull the building’s door shut, the woman fought to try to pull it open and slashed the guard on the forearm with the machete.
The guard suffered two five-inch cuts, and the woman drove away.
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Police said around the same time as the attack, a group of protesters down the street dumbed garbage and set fire to a flag on the East Precinct fence line. Members of the group initially tended to the guard’s wounds before police took over.
Police placed a tourniquet on the man and called for medics who transported him to Harborview Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries.
The suspect was found at a nearby gas station and was later booked into the King County Jail on investigation of assault.