(SEATTLE) — It was around 10 p.m. on a cloudy August night. Mollie Chehab walked along University Way Northeast with a friend. She keeps to her unwritten rules of city living as a woman: walk with a friend, be aware of your surroundings, carry pepper spray. As the pair turned onto Northeast 42nd St., glancing to their left at Magus Books, a man emerged from the alleyway in front of them swinging his arms and attempting to spit at them.
“This guy pops out of the shadows and starts trying to swing at us and spit on us, and starts yelling profanities at us,” Chehab recalled. “And I feel like it was one of those situations where he really caught us off guard.”
Although The Ave is a popular destination for University students, it’s also an area where property crimes and low-level disturbances are common. So much so that there’s a “1 in 16 chance of becoming a victim of crime” within the district, according to AreaVibes, an algorithm and user-generated data collection site that may differ from official crime reports.
“You hear about all [of] these incidents happening to other people, but having it happen to you is definitely a lot more alarming,” Chehab said. “I feel like the hard part, too, is kind of figuring out how to handle it, because, again, it can catch you off guard. And then in my situation we were like, ‘Well, the police aren’t gonna come for like 40 minutes probably.’” Believing the man may have been in crisis, she said, “Like, is that really gonna do anything? Like, if the police just come and tell him to stop he [might not] understand that.”…