According to the Seattle Public Schools, on Tuesday morning, Jan. 27, a man tried to pull a female Whitman Middle School student into his car. SPS issued a widespread email to parents with the details of the incident and information on how to respond to situations such as this.
The message stated that a man in a silver four-door sedan parked less than two blocks from the school tried to pull the student into his car. He whistled to the student and grabbed her arm. The man was not wearing pants. The student managed to get away from the man, and she ran to school to report the incident. School staff called the police and the crime is being investigated by Seattle Police Department. SPS described the man as a “mixed-race” male.
“Our student did everything right, immediately getting away from the stranger and reporting the incident to the school, to the police and to her family,” wrote SPS. SPD has not release the report for the incident as investigators explore leads.
“For this type of investigation we typically don’t put the case report out. We are working with the victim and trying to get as many details as we can. Cases like this take time. Hopefully we get some good news in the future and catch the suspect,” said SPD Detective, Patrick Michaud.
According to King County Sheriff’s Office OffenderWatch database, there are at least 10 sex offenders living one mile from Whitman Middle School. Most of the offenders are rated as level two, but there is at least one level III and another offender who was convicted for second degree kidnapping.
SPD states on their website: “Individuals who appear in these databases have been convicted of sex or kidnapping offenses that require registration with the sheriff's office in the county of their residence. Further, their previous criminal history places them in a classification level, which reflects the potential to re-offend.” The offenders tracked in the list are level II (moderate risk) and level III (high risk). An estimated 70 percent of sex offenders are considered level I, which is considered “low risk,” and are not required to be tracked to the degree of the other higher-level offenders.
To offenders living so close to schools, officials say it’s not as unusual as one might think.
“This is pretty normal. I think that a lot of people think that offenders are prohibited from living around schools, but whether they live around schools or not is a condition of their release from prison and does not pertain to them being sex offenders,” said Sergeant DB Gates with the King County Sheriff’s Office.
