Woman groped by stranger while walking at popular Puyallup park. Police are investigating
Puyallup police are investigating a sexual assault that happened Friday at Bradley Lake Park.
A woman called 911 and reported that she was groped about 2 p.m. as she walked around the lake.
“This is a broad-daylight thing, which is pretty unusual,” Puyallup Police spokesperson Captain Kevin Gill told The News Tribune Tuesday.
Gill told The News Tribune that the case is assigned to detectives and that they are reviewing video.
“It seems to be a one-off incident,” he said. “We don’t have reports of anything else.”
Brittny Babcock, the woman who was assaulted, agreed to speak with The News Tribune on the record. The 38-year-old wants other park-goers to know what happened.
She lives near the park and walks there almost every day, she said.
“It was kind of rainy and there were other people at the park, which made me feel good,” she said. “Grandmas and their dogs, a guy with his baby feeding the ducks.”
She felt safe.
As she walked along the paved path, she said she noticed a man, possibly a teenager, in a sweatshirt who seemed odd. He wasn’t dressed appropriately for the weather, and he kept leapfrogging her as he jogged on the path, at times getting uncomfortably close and stopping on the side of the trail, she said.
That went on for a little less than half the trail that loops around the lake, she said. It was on the part of the loop that goes by bathrooms near the ballfields at the park that he ran up and grabbed her butt, she said.
“I didn’t hear him coming, so it was really out of nowhere,” she said. “I screamed at him. I said: ‘Hey, are you kidding me?’”
He ran back into the wooded part of the park, and she called the police, she said.
“I saw him run to his car and he jumped in his car while I was on the phone with police and drove off,” she said.
He’d taken the sweatshirt off at that point.
“I feel like he was trying to change the way he looked,” she said. “I don’t know.”
Since the assault, she said she hasn’t wanted to go on walks.
“I haven’t wanted to go outside,” she said, crying. “I feel really unsafe. The mailman came up behind me the other day. I was in my driveway. I didn’t see him. It really scared me. It’s been not very good.”
She’s never had a bad experience at Bradley Lake before, she said, and has been going there her whole life.
“I don’t think I will ever want to go back to that park, to be honest,” she said.
‘Our parks are safe’
Gill emphasized that she did everything right, by having her phone with her, being in an area with other people, being aware of her surroundings, noticing that the person was making her uncomfortable and immediately calling police.
“If something doesn’t seem right to you, follow your instincts,” he said. “It never hurts to have a partner. It never hurts to be where there are other people.”
Babcock said she hasn’t talked to a detective since that day. It’s reassuring to hear that she did everything right, she said.
“I did notice myself feeling initially like I did something wrong,” she said. “I go over it in my head. It was the middle of the day. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Gill also emphasized that, while police can’t plan or account for every situation, Bradley Lake is generally a safe place.
“Be aware, be prepared, and just know our parks are safe and we do everything we can to follow up on these, but this is not a common occurrence for us,” he said.
