http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/01/poice_say_trimet_barber_quietl.html TriMet rider pleads not guilty to cutting woman's hair
By Joseph Rose, The Oregonian
January 04, 2010, 7:32PM
walter.jpgJared WalterSome TriMet bus riders listen to their iPods. Others read the newspaper.
Jared Weston Walter, meanwhile, passed time on the No. 33 line last week by sneakily cutting another passenger's hair with scissors, police say.
On New Year's Eve, a woman called 9-1-1 to report that the accused "TriMet barber" snipped off chunks of her hair while sitting behind her on the southbound bus on McLoughlin Boulevard.
On Monday, Walter appeared in Multnomah County Circuit Court, where he pleaded not guilty to third-degree robbery, interfering with public transit, second-degree disorderly conduct and harassment.
During the hearing, Deputy District Attorney Chuck French said that Walter is a suspect in "a number of incidents" in which women riders have either had their hair cut or "superglued" on TriMet buses.
Bekki Witt, a TriMet spokeswoman, said three similar "hair-cutting incidents" have been reported in the past six weeks.
"I don't know if they are all connected," Witt said, "but I think we can probably assume it's the same person. It's a pretty unusual activity."
Walter, 22, has been convicted in Texas of burglary with intent to commit a sex crime. He also has an outstanding warrant on an assault charge in King County, Wash., in connection with a hair-gluing incident.
Walter was cited on TriMet in December, days prior to the hai-cutting incident, for not having proper fare to ride a bus.
Transit police say they can't recall another assault as strange as the one reported on the afternoon of New Years Eve.
The woman didn't realize her hair had been cut until after she had stepped off the No. 33 bus at the Milwaukie Transit Center, Witt said. Walter also stepped off the bus at the transit center, but an officer caught up to him and took him into custody.
Although the call and arrest happened in Clackamas County, video from an on-board surveillance camera "showed that the actual cutting happened in Multnomah County," Witt said.
Talking to a defense attorney from behind a glass partition in the courtroom, Walter could be heard asking, "Is this a felony charge?" Concerned by Walter's prior convictions, Circuit Judge L. Randall Weisberg ordered him to meet with a pretrial supervisor before being released from the jail.
A few blocks from the Justice Center courtroom in which Walter was arraigned, few of the people waiting for downtown buses along the transit mall had heard of the bizarre case.
Tanya Siroshton of Southeast Portland had a hard time believing it at first. "What a strange thing to do," she said. "The worst I've encountered is people who smell really bad."
Julie Flanagan, a Portland State University graduate student who moved to Portland from South Carolina three months ago, said she doesn't even like the idea of people sitting behind her on the bus.
She has even developed strategies to finding a seat whenever she boards a bus, preferring to sit against the windows, near the front, or in the very back. If those seats are taken, she'd rather to stand.
"There are the coughers and the heavy breathers," Flanagan said. "I don't want sit in front of them."
And now this.
Flanagan, whose long brown hair hung over her shoulders, said the idea of a stranger snipping her hair on the bus gave her "the creeps."
"That's terrifying," she said. "I'd be pretty angry."
