Palmer police seeking man in rape attempt

PALMER — Police have not yet identified the man suspected of trying to rape a 15-year-old Sutton girl, but it’s not for lack of trying.

Palmer Police Detective Sgt. Kelly Turney said he’s been spending all of his available time since the alleged rape looking for the man the girl said attacked her early Saturday morning.

So far, Turney said he’s had a few tips called in, people reporting suspicious vehicles and asking him to check out one person or another.

“I think most cases are solvable, it just takes that one person who saw something or heard something,” Turney said.

The person might think his or her tip is insignificant, but, “For us it may be that one piece that we need or the one report that we need to tie up the loose ends,” he said.

The attack happened close to the intersection of South Felton Street and West Fern Avenue, Turney said. The girl was walking from one friend’s house on the north side of town to another friend’s house in Brittany Estates. She was a couple blocks from her destination when a man accosted her.

“There’s some construction going on over there,” Turney said. “From that street corner to the next street corner south there’s not a whole lot of light there. There’s definitely a correlation sometimes between crime and whether an area is well lit or not.”

The girl told police the man who attacked her is about 30 years old and was wearing a white baseball cap, black hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans. He fled on foot and, although police haven’t yet linked him to a vehicle, they’re hoping someone saw a suspicious vehicle that might be involved.

The girl was able to fight off her attacker and made it to her destination, where a neighbor heard her crying and summoned police, Turney said. She was injured in the struggle, badly enough to send her by ambulance to Mat-Su Regional Medical Center.

Turney said he didn’t get a good sense of what injuries she had, but he does know she’s since been released from the hospital.

The attack is one of two sexual assaults in Palmer over the weekend. The other involved a 22-year-old woman as the victim and was reported Sunday. Turney said the two incidents are not related, that the second victim knew her attacker and police have identified a suspect in that case, but an arrest has not yet been made.

The attack on the Sutton girl, Turney said, has some in the community concerned. It’s not the sort of thing that happens often in Palmer, or for that matter, the Valley.

What sets it apart from most sexual assault cases is that it seems to be more of a random attack, Turney said. The girl didn’t know her attacker and was accosted on the street.

“This is the first one that I can think of, at least of this nature, since I’ve been here for at least five years,” he said.

Anyone with information about the assault is asked to call Turney at 745-4811 or Mat-Su Crime Stoppers at 745-3333.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.