Palo Alto police are investigating an underpass sexual assault of a woman Sunday afternoon on California Avenue. The suspect, who is unknown so far, is on the run, for which reason the authorities have distributed a spoken portrait.
On Sunday, April 9, around 2:49 p.m., the service center of the Palo Alto Police Department, received a call from a passerby reporting that he had discovered a woman in the California Avenue pedestrian underpass, who informed him that she had just been sexually assaulted, to which authorities responded immediately.
Investigation revealed that the victim, a woman in her fifties, was walking her bicycle east through the underpass when she was passed by the attacker, who was walking his bicycle west. After that, the suspect hit the victim from behind and made her fall to the ground, and then sexually assaulted her.
The victim yelled for help, at which point the suspect stole her cell phone and fled in an unknown direction. The passerby, who had not witnessed the assault, soon came to her aid and called the police.
Officers were able to locate her cell phone in the 3000 block of Emerson Street around 3:05 p.m. and are processing it as evidence.
Authorities said Palo Alto Fire Department paramedics transported the victim to a local hospital, where he received treatment for a laceration to the back of his head and bruising to his neck, as well as a forensic medical examination.
The victim described the suspect as an Asian male between the ages of 30 and 40, about 5 feet 5 inches tall with a stocky build. He further stated that he was clean-shaven and was wearing a dark bicycle helmet, dark sunglasses, and a yellow high-visibility shirt. The victim met with a police sketch artist on Monday, April 10, and the artist produced the suspect's earlier sketch.
Police are actively investigating this case, including canvassing the area for any available surveillance footage that may have caught the suspect before or after the assault. No similar crimes have been reported to the police recently in Palo Alto.
The Palo Alto Police Department requested that anyone with information regarding this incident call the 24-hour dispatch center at (650) 329-2413. Anonymous tips can be emailed to paloalto@tipnow.org or sent via text or voicemail to (650) 383-8984.
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