JEDDAH, 16 February 2006 — An armed man was arrested and a young woman injured early yesterday morning in Al-Rawdah district as a Valentine’s night turned life-threatening.
Neglecting police calls, the suspect attempted to flee unsuccessfully, said eyewitnesses. The incident began when passers-by noticed a woman standing on a window eave crying for help.
According to eyewitnesses, the woman jumped out of fear for her life. She was rushed to a nearby hospital and is in stable condition.
According to a police source that requested not to be named, it was a small Valentine’s get-together. Feeling threatened she tried to escape her alleged attacker by calling for help from the window. She crawled out onto the eave and then jumped.
Police are currently investigating the incident.
Arab News spoke to Ibrahim, an eyewitness at the scene.
“I had just left my home close to midnight heading to a friend’s house when I saw a large crowd of people gathering under a window. That’s when I saw a young woman in her mid-20s screaming for help,” he said.
According to Ibrahim, she was crying for help, claming that a man in the apartment had a gun and was threatening to kill her.
“She was also bargaining with the man inside the apartment requesting him to open the locked door,” said Ibrahim.
Ibrahim said he circled the area looking for a parking space, as the crowd of witnesses grew larger.
“When I came back, the crowd was still there but she wasn’t on the window eave; she had jumped,” he said.
A number of incidents were reported in the past of men luring women into closed areas, sexually assaulting them and videotaping the crime. Intentions are to publicly humiliate and threaten their victims. Some scenes of the videos have been spread all over the Kingdom via Bluetooth.
In January 2005, a Saudi court sentenced three men to jail and up to 1,200 lashes apiece for orchestrating and filming the rape of a young woman using camera phones and distributing the footage digitally.
