Sign leads to scuffle in The Junction, police say

The weapon-waving incident reported here wasn’t the only police response in The Junction early this afternoon. Tonight SPD released this initial summary of what officers were told started as a scuffle over a sign:

At 1337 hours, a 71-year-old victim, who is of Jewish descent, was walking along the street when he saw a sign in support of Gaza on a light pole. The victim ripped the sign off the light pole. The suspect, a male in his 30’s, was walking dogs nearby and yelled at the victim and the victim yelled back at the suspect. The suspect then approached the victim and headbutted him in the face, causing significant facial injuries and knocking him to the ground. The suspect was calling the victim a “f—ing Zionist pig” during the attack. After the suspect headbutted the victim, he began to walk away. The victim got up and yelled at the suspect, asking him what his problem was. The suspect then turned toward the victim and walked at him aggressively. The victim, fearing he was going to be assaulted again, pepper sprayed the suspect. Regardless of being pepper sprayed, the suspect was able to knock the victim to the ground, get on top of him and repeatedly punch him in his face. The suspect only stopped when on-lookers intervened. The victim believed the assault was because of his religion.

We didn’t hear any of this in realtime so we just checked the audio archives. Over the publicly monitorable air, it was dispatched simply as a fight between two men near 42nd/Alaska. If you have information, the SPD incident # is 25-299777.

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