Gary Steiner, a sex offender from Arizona, was charged Wednesday with attempted second-degree rape and second-degree assault with sexual motivation. He remains jailed in lieu of $750,000 bail.
Seattle police say a homeless sex offender hid in a stall in the women’s restroom at Golden Gardens Park on Sunday afternoon with the intention of raping a woman, according to charges filed Wednesday by King County prosecutors.
According to detectives who interviewed Gary Steiner in the King County Jail on Wednesday morning, Steiner told them two other women had come into the restroom but he didn’t attack them, charging papers say. But when a third woman — the 36-year-old alleged victim — turned on the hand-dryer, he approached her from behind, the charges say.
Steiner is charged with attempted second-degree rape and second-degree assault with sexual motivation. He remains jailed in lieu of $750,000 bail.
“He knocked her down and punched her repeatedly in the face as he attempted to rape her,” Senior Deputy Prosecutor Carla Carlstrom wrote in charging papers. She said the victim “fought hard and her screams were heard by a witness outside who called 911.”
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The woman escaped and with the help of bystanders, locked Steiner in the restroom until police arrived, the charges say.
She told officers Steiner had tried to flip her on her stomach, at which point “she felt like she was going to be raped,” according to charging papers. She crawled underneath a stall door but Steiner grabbed her hips and tried to pull down her leggings, then used her body to drag himself into the stall with her, say the charges.
The woman, who had been on a run training for a marathon, clawed at Steiner’s face and tried to strike him with her elbows, the charges say.
Police say Steiner told them he stopped his attack when he saw all the blood on the victim, waited in the stall for officers to arrive and said he wanted police to kill him, say the charges.
“The defendant represents a severe danger to the community. His predatory attack on a female in the middle of the day represents a brazen willingness to assault without concern for getting caught,” Carlstrom wrote in charging documents.
Steiner was convicted in Maricopa, Arizona, of sexually assaulting several women in 1999 and indecent exposure in 2008, according to the charges and the Clark County sheriff’s online sex-offender registry.
He was charged in Clark County with failing to register as a sex offender; he is listed there as a transient Level 3 sex offender, say the charges and website.
He was convicted in Clark County last year of criminal mischief with a deadly weapon, a felony, as well as lesser charges of second-degree criminal trespass and harassment, say the charges filed in the rape case.
Steiner is to be arraigned March 22.