Woman says she was assaulted after confronting suspected porch pirate
By MIA VILLANUEVA
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PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) — A man is accused of assaulting a woman in southeast Portland after she confronted him for trespassing and taking items from her neighbor’s property.
Anna Fischer told FOX 12 she was standing in front of her home in the Sellwood neighborhood on Sunday when she was punched in the face after confronting a man she saw rummaging through belongings on her neighbor’s porch. She wasn’t seriously hurt but hopes the man gets caught before someone else is.
“I close my eyes and I just see him swinging at me, and that’s been really hard,” Fischer said.
Fischer says she has had trouble sleeping the past two nights following her assault. It was around 5:30 p.m. when she looked out her window to see an unfamiliar man scoping out her open garage.
She says she lost sight of him, so she went outside only to find the man carrying a handful of items off her neighbor’s porch. As she watched him walk onto the porch of two more homes, she screamed at him from across the street.
“I shouted again, ‘You need to get out of here, you don’t live here, you need to go,'” she said.
After a heated exchange, Fischer says the man crossed the street and approached, getting about eight feet away from her. She told him to back up and that’s when he lunged at her.
“He just paused a beat and he just clocked me, and I fell into the bushes,” she told FOX 12. “I was just shocked that that happened.”
She says she started screaming for someone to call the cops, then several neighbors came outside and called 911, but the man had already ran off. Fischer described the man as white, skinny build, around 5 feet 10 inches tall, and wearing dirty clothes. She says he appeared to be mentally ill.
Fischer says she’s shaken up but grateful for her neighbors who came to her rescue.
“My neighbors are amazing. I get very choked up but they all came, phones in hand, and ran out to embrace me,” she said. “They are just extraordinary people and that’s probably why I did what I did. You don’t belong here, you’re messing with my family on my street.”
Fischer says this is the first time an incident like this has happened on her street. She says if the suspect is caught she will press charges. Anyone who recognizes the suspect is asked to contact Portland police.
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