(August 8th WSB photo by Christopher Boffoli)
39-year-old Ryan Cox has just been charged with second-degree assault, with a deadly weapon, in last Tuesday night’s Gatewood stabbing attack. And Cox’s bail has been set at $150,000.
The 40-year-old victim remains in the hospital, according to a comment from a family friend, recovering from multiple stab wounds. Cox also was taken to Harborview after the attack last Tuesday night, with what police say was a self-inflicted stab wound.
According to charging documents, “the defendant is unemployed, homeless, and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia but does not take medication. He has been booked 28 times since 1997 and has had 26 warrants issued for his arrest.” The documents also include a more-detailed police-provided narrative that notes “Cox is a known transient, living in West Seattle, not only to the SPD officers that work in the Southwest Precinct, but to the citizens that live in the area.” That’s dated back to at least 2009, as we detailed in our Wednesday followup.
The narrative says that one witness saw Cox and Heeter arguing on August 2nd, and that they saw Cox pull a knife during that incident, though no one was injured. When Heeter was well enough to speak with police in the hospital last Thursday, the narrative says, he told them that he and his 3-year-old daughter were at a nearby gas station about a week earlier when Cox was there. Cox, he said, was yelling at everyone, including racial slurs. Heeter told police his daughter had become frightened and that Cox looked at them and said he better hold his daughter tight or he might get her. Hester said he told Cox to stop talking about his daughter and left. He told police he saw Cox again a few days later and tried to talk to him about frightening his daughter, but Cox started to yell. The night of the attack, Heeter said, he saw Cox walking near the Westside Unitarian Universalist Church and pulled into its lot, got out of his car, and yelled at Cox. That, he said, is when Cox lunged at him and started slashing.
The charging documents also include Cox’s side of the story, claiming he was being “stalked” by the victim, as well as detailing tirades at the hospital. (added) Here are the documents – please note that they contain the racial and homophobic slurs Cox is alleged to have used after his arrest. They do not include names of witnesses or any other third parties besides police and prosecutors, which is why we are uploading them directly rather than transcribing as we would otherwise do. Cox is scheduled to be arraigned – to enter an initial plea to the charge – on August 28th.
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