Attacked at Auditorium Shores
Once upon a time, I was going to go to law school. Although those plans have changed, here’s the purpose statement I wrote for my application.
My knees press into the damp grass as he forces me to the ground. One of his hands is gripping onto the back of my head, his fingers intertwining with my hair, as his other hand slams into the side of my face, my cheek, my eye, my temple. I try to grab at whatever I can, try to remember anything from those self-defense classes, but it’s no use—in the angle he’s holding me, I am overpowered. With tears stinging in my eyes, all I can make out is a blur of green grass below me. It feels like a bad dream. I want to wake up. And then reality hits as a single thought permeates my mind— “Am I about to die?”
And then he lets go. I fall to the ground, and from the corner of my eye, I see him walk away. As I sit in the middle of Auditorium Shores Park, a crowd of trail goers surround me. I assume they are asking me whether I’m okay, but I am in shock, and everything feels fuzzy. A couple says they’re going to follow the man, keeping an eye on his location, while another man says he’s on the phone with 911. A woman helps me to my feet, grabbing my phone to take photos of my fresh injuries while another person hands me a blue Gatorade.
The date is Friday, May 19, 2023. It is 8:30 in the morning.
Around 45 minutes later, police arrive at the scene. They tell me they’ll go talk to the man who assaulted me, but can’t arrest him without a proper warrant, issued by a judge. I stand in the middle of the park, in the spot I had just been assaulted less than an hour earlier, in awe. He couldn’t be arrested? This man attacked me in a park, unprovoked, and there are no immediate consequences for his actions? Before driving off, the officer leaves me with some parting advice, “Don’t forget Texas is an open carry state. You should purchase a gun.”
Days later, investigators tell me that unless an assault is witnessed by an officer or impacts a protected class, an arrest can’t be made on site. While the officer’s suggestion was an attempt to give me back the sense of security I had just lost, I know a firearm isn’t going to help me. With my attacker still walking around, I know my best line of defense is awareness. Utilizing a photo taken by one of the witnesses, I publicize my attack on the internet.
Within 24 hours of my post going live, information from strangers across social media supply me with a name. Suddenly, the man who attacked me in the park becomes Scout. Instinctively, I tap into my journalism background and dive deeper. Scout, a 27-year-old Austin native, is homeless. His previous offenses include arson, breaking and entering, and stalking. I dive even deeper. I find his Facebook and Twitter, and discover he studied at Austin Community College at one point. Uncovering the deeper story creates a different image of Scout in my head, revealing multiple parallels between the two of us. After all, we are both 27 years old and living in Austin. We probably share experiences universal to individuals of the same generation, yet we ended up in entirely different worlds. But how? My years as a writer taught me to always follow the story. So, I pulled at the thread, revealing a complicated childhood and a heartbreaking home life.
By seeking to better understand the factors that contributed to that day in the park, I found that compassion for Scout now accompanies my fear of him. While my original goal was to keep other women safe from him, my penchant for the full picture catalyzed a mindset that made the comforts of complacency I felt in my previous career nearly impossible to return to. I feel a new sense of purpose to help not only victims of crime, like me, but also victims of circumstance, like Scout, by always digging for what’s underneath.
This mindset and skillset are something I will carry with me into my legal career, in whatever form of law I end up practicing. Driven by a curiosity for the full story, I believe that this deeper understanding of the complete picture will only benefit my understandings of the complexities and nuances within the law, and ultimately benefit my clients and the pursuit of justice.