Redmond police arrested a 17-year-old boy for second-degree assault after he allegedly threatened another teenager with a knife and then bragged on Facebook that officers would not be able to catch him.
At around 8:30 p.m., the suspect approached a group of kids at the proposed Redmond Bike Park, located at a city-owned parcel of land near Hartman Park in the 17200 block of Northeast 104th Street. The suspect asked one of the teenagers if he wanted to buy an iPod, which police said was stolen, according to police spokesperson Jim Bove.
The victim, a 15-year-old boy, said he wasn’t interested and that’s when “the suspect pulled a knife on him and then threatened to use it,” Bove said. The suspect then shoved the victim to the ground and ran away with two other teenagers that were with him, but not involved with the altercation. No one was injured.
The suspect, who lives in unincorporated King County, north of Redmond, returned home and then posted on Facebook “that the cops couldn’t catch him,” Bove said. A friend of the victim saw the post and notified the victim, who then alerted the police.
The incident happened the same day some nearby residents filed an appeal against the City of Redmond’s plans to turn that parcel of land into a formal park called Redmond Bike Park. The wooded area features a series of bike-jump trails that has been used for decades by neighborhood bike riders. The plan calls for adding more bike-jump trails and other landscape features.
Residents are concerned that adding more bike-jump trails will attract more people to the neighborhood and consequently increase noise, crime and traffic in the area.
