In the wee hours of January 29, two UVA students were sexually assaulted in the Corner/Wertland Street area between 12:30am and 2:30am. Though the incidents were no doubt scary and have Corner-hoppers on edge, the women reported their attacker was, well, kind of lame.
Around 12:30, a 21-year-old student was walking home from Satellite Ballroom. She heard noises behind her and noticed a white male of medium height and build, who was clean-cut with dark hair. He followed her to her apartment on the 1200 block of Wertland Street. When she opened the door, the man grabbed her around the waist, forced his way in and sexually assaulted her. The woman screamed for her roommate and boyfriend, who were at home, and the boyfriend chased the assailant down the street.
 "Within a football field of each other" is how Police Captain J.E. "Chip" Harding describes two sexual assault incidents in the Wertland Street/Corner area. |
He didn’t catch him, though, and two hours later, police think another woman ran into the same attacker.
A 28-year-old law student was walking home on West Main Street. As she passed by Mellow Mushroom restaurant, a white male of similar description told her it was too cold to walk home and asked if she like a ride. She initially agreed and walked with the man to 13th Street, where she changed her mind and began walking back toward University Avenue. The man forced her up against a car and made sexual advances, pulling down his zipper. The woman broke free, went home and eventually called police.
The first woman described her attacker as wearing a dark sweatshirt and light-colored pants; the second said the man was wearing dark pants and a dark-colored button-down shirt. Despite the change in wardrobe, police say the physical description and modus operandi match up. For example, the man didn’t make any profane or threatening statements while he assaulted them.
“The probability that in little Charlottesville, Virginia, on a cold, windy night like that, that you have women attacked within basically a football field of each other…the probability of it being more than one person is extreme,” says Charlottesville Police Captain J. E. “Chip” Harding.
Of the attacker’s weakling status, “I bet he’s a lot stronger than they realize,” Harding says. “…He chose not to escalate [the attacks] for some reason we don’t know.”
The incident has students and citizens on edge, and the Wertland Street neighborhood continues to fend off a reputation of being dangerous—last September, a male UVA student was shot in the gut by two men while talking on his cell phone on the porch of a residence.
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