We got an email this morning from a reader that read:
Hi folks.
I called 911 late last night when I heard a woman screaming for help. Apparently a number of other folks did as well. I couldn’t see anything from my window, but I saw the cops arrive, and later a fire engine. Paramedics, I assume. Do you have any idea what happened?
We do.
According to Sgt. Mike Andraychak of the SFPD:
Last night at 11:50 p.m., a 50-year-old woman was walking on 17th toward Alabama. She was approached by a man who looked to be in his mid-30s, wearing a white shirt and a baseball cap. He grabbed her and threw her to the ground, then attempted to cover her mouth with his hand. She managed to bite his hand and scream for help.
A neighborhood resident heard the woman’s screams, ran outside, and yelled at the man attacking her. The Good Samaritan then grabbed a shovel and chased her attacker with it for several blocks before losing him.
Several neighbors also called 911 during the incident. An ambulance arrived to attend to the victim for what turned out to be minor injuries.
Police searched for the assailant but were not able to locate him.
When we finished writing this up, we had a question of our own: Why didn’t this incident make the crime report?
SFPD enters crime data into a system called Brink, Andraychak told us. Brink then uses a complex set of factors — how severely a person was injured, whether anything was stolen and so forth — to categorize the crimes in order of severity. Apparently, Brink didn’t find this crime sufficiently severe to make the report.