The Seventh Victim

In the past, there have been a series of attacks on white and Asian women in a local neighborhood, and the police was under pressure to solve the cases. Tyrone Briggs was charged with aggravated assault in the crimes. Tyrone Briggs was a nineteen-year-old high school basketball star who, at the time of the crimes, was living in the Yesler Terrace. Since the attacks had all happened in the same area, during the same early morning hours, they were considered the work of a serial attacker. Because of the close proximity of the attacks to the hospital, they became known jointly as the Harborview rape case. Harborview Medical Center was next to a public housing project the Yesler Terrace, run by the city. Tyrone Briggs had lived in Yesler Terrace with his parents, brothers, and sister for about a dozen years and was living there at the time of the attacks. Hundreds of young black men lived there, and the police were picking up those between the ages of fourteen and thirty for questioning. A police stakeout was conducted in the neighborhood to try to catch the assailant during this time. The general description given by the witnesses (most of whom were the victims of the assaults) at the time of the attacks described a man who did not fit the descriptions of Tyrone Briggs, and the police officers had no reason to detain him. When the trial began, the prosecutor seemed adamant that Tyrone Briggs was the attacker of those women. The frustrating injustice of the whole case made the Briggs family’s blood boil. Joanne Spencer couldn’t imagine how it felt to be Tyrone Briggs, star high school basketball player now locked up in prison for something he didn’t do.

-- Joanne Spencer