Bystanders attacked a naked man after he allegedly grabbed a 7-year-old girl walking with her family near downtown Portland’s waterfront Saturday and tried to kidnap her, police said.
The Portland Police Bureau said in a statement that the man — 31-year-old Daniel C. Vasey — is accused of first- and second- degree attempted kidnapping, first-degree custodial interference, third- degree assault and harassment in the incident, which happened just before 7 p.m.
Police did not publicly identify the girl or her family, but said that they were on vacation in Portland at the time of the alleged attack.
Vasey was allegedly spotted “running around naked” in the 1000 block of Southwest Naito Parkway, police said, and a bystander reported him to 911 around 6:50 p.m.
Minutes later, another caller reported that Vasey had tried to punch someone in the head, officials said, but police said that nobody from the bureau’s downtown precinct was available to respond to the call.
Just after 7 p.m., yet another call came in — this time saying that the still-naked Vasey had allegedly grabbed a young girl and pulled her away from her mother, police said. But the mother held onto her daughter’s arm, and in the ensuing back-and-forth struggle, the child was yanked off her feet, police said.
With police from the bureau’s North Precinct still minutes away, bystanders rushed to the girl’s parents’ aid and the small crowd punched, slapped, pulled and maced Vasey, police said.
Vasey then relented, officials said, and gave up the girl in the face of the onslaught. When police arrived to arrest him, they found that he’d wandered off and waded into the Willamette River.
A search for Vasey’s name in Oregon court records doesn’t show any prior criminal convictions, and he remains in jail while he waits for his first court appearance to be scheduled.
It’s not the first time in recent months that Portlanders have taken things into their own hands as they waited for police to arrive.
In April, a 31-year-old man who targeted more than half a dozen women by groping or chasing them through Council Crest Park faced a reckoning when the women — a “sisterhood” of strangers, according to one victim — surrounded the man, stopping him in his tracks.
Their target, Ayman Elkholy of Beaverton, ultimately pleaded guilty to three counts of harassment and one count of attempted strangulation.
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