When one alleged victim told Sean Reilly, 21, she would rather be shot than raped, prosecutors say he told her, "You'll get over it." Reilly entered not-guilty pleas on Thursday to kidnapping, robbery and assault charges in connection with three of the five women he is accused of attacking over four weeks this summer.
Over four weeks this summer, Seattle police say a 21-year-old Seattle man attacked five young women within a 9-block radius of his University District apartment, forcing two of them to walk into Ravenna Park where he had a mattress secreted in the woods.
Arrested Aug. 28, Sean Reilly posted a $500,000 bond three days later but was taken back into custody on Sept. 5, jail and court records show. Originally from Texas, Reilly, who remains jailed, is considered a flight risk and his bail was raised to $750,000, the records say.
Charged in two separate cases involving three of the five women, Reilly on Thursday pleaded not guilty to first-degree kidnapping with sexual motivation, first-degree kidnapping, two counts of first-degree robbery and one count of second-degree assault, according to court records.
In at least three of the incidents, Reilly was armed with what turned out to be a pellet gun, charging papers say. The alleged attacks happened between July 27 and Aug. 26 near Greek Row just off the University of Washington campus, all roughly between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m.
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The women all provided police with similar physical descriptions of the man who attacked them, two helped police create sketches of their assailant and, following Reilly’s arrest, three of the women positively identified him from a photo montage, say the charges.
According to the charges:
A 19-year-old woman, who lives across the alley from Reilly, was walking home on July 27 when she was approached from behind and robbed of her cellphone at gunpoint. Her assailant then forced her to walk several blocks north and led her to a mattress in the bushes at Ravenna Park.
The woman told the man she would rather be shot than raped.
“The defendant callously told her ‘you’ll get over it’ and that ‘it wouldn’t break her,’ ” Senior Deputy Prosecutor Emily Petersen wrote in charging papers. “The defendant then violently grabbed the victim by the throat and tried to push her down on the mattress.”
The woman punched her attacker in the face, knocking his glasses and hat off, the charges say. She fled the park and flagged down a passing vehicle, whose occupants called police.
Late on Aug. 7, a 21-year-old woman was walking on Northeast 47th Street when a man put an arm around her neck from behind; she heard a “clicking sound” and felt something pressed into her back, say the charges. He demanded her wallet and cellphone and she spun around to face him, screaming when she saw the gun. The man struck her in the face with the weapon multiple times, but she broke free and ran to a nearby fraternity house, charging papers say.
A few days later, on Aug. 11, two 19-year-old women were hugging each other on 17th Avenue Northeast near Northeast 52nd Street when a man walked past them, laughed to himself, and turned back, punching one woman in the ear and the other in the mouth, causing her to fall and hit her head, say the charges. The man ran and was chased by one of the women, who he punched in the mouth. She too fell and hit her head. Both women suffered concussions and other injuries, the charges say.
A week later, around 3:30 a.m. on Aug. 18, University of Washington police officers were in the area of Northeast 52nd Street and 19th Avenue Northeast responding to a report of gunshots when they contacted a man walking alone and asked if he’d heard gunfire, according to the charges. The officers noticed the man matched the description of the suspect in the three attacks and recorded his name and took his photo, then passed the information along to Seattle police. The man, identified as Reilly, mentioned to the officers that he was originally from Texas, the charges say.
On Aug. 26, a 19-year-old woman was walking to her brother’s fraternity house when she heard someone run up behind her and turned to see a man with a gun, say the charges. He took her cellphone and then forced her to walk to Ravenna Park, mentioning along the way that he was from Texas. When they reached the park, he led her onto a path but ran away when the woman’s brother texted her, saying he had tracked her phone and wondered why she was in the park, say the charges.
Two days later, Reilly was arrested by members of the Seattle Police Department’s SWAT team in a traffic stop after he drove away from his residence with a 22-year-old woman he had met on the dating app Tinder, charging papers say.