Victim Says Teen Behind Bloody Assault and Robbery Walked on Charges Thanks to Low IQ
A St. Louis woman says that the judicial system failed her by letting her teenage neighbor walk free after attacking her.
The attack reportedly occurred on Feb. 17 when Alicia Clarke went for a quick evening run, KSDK reported.
When she returned, she noticed her shoes had been moved and her cellphone was gone. After using Find My iPhone technology to confirm it was nearby, she used her work phone to call it.
“I open my back door to call it and I hear it in my neighbor’s backyard behind me,” she said.
According to KSDK, Clarke hopped the fence to retrieve the phone and quickly jumped back when she heard her neighbor yell at her.
When she told him she was going to call the police, the teen jumped the fence and tackled her.
“He knocked me down, pulling my hair, kicking,” she said.
The neighbor, identified by Clarke’s sister as a 15-year-old Somalian refugee, then ran off again with her personal cell phone.
She told KSDK she was on her work phone with the St. Louis police when her violent neighbor returned with a weapon.
“He is on top of me. There was blood everywhere,” she said. “I was literally fighting for my life at that point.”
He stabbed her in the head and face with a screwdriver, breaking her nose in the process. According to her sister, Andrea Clarke Flatley, Clarke also had to get staples in her head and stitches to the puncture wound under her eye.
According to KSDK, a second neighbor reported the teen breaking into a different home.
When Clarke and her sister arrived at the juvenile court building for the teen’s hearing, they were informed that his case had been dismissed.
“On arrival, we learned from that same patient advocate that [the attacker’s] IQ is 49,” Flatley’s Facebook post read. “This makes him incompetent to aid in his own defense, therefore all charges were formally dismissed by the prosecutor, Sakina Ahmad.”
The prosecutor told Clarke the best thing she could do was get a restraining order against her attacker. Clarke is sharing her story in order to bring about a change in the system.
“It’s not feeling safe and honestly feeling like I’ve been failed by the system,” she told KSDK. “This is going to happen again, and that’s my number one priority that it doesn’t.”
According to her sister’s updated Facebook post, the teen violated the restraining order after four days and police took him back into custody on Feb. 26.
“Let’s see how the prosecutors office handles this gift of a second chance they’ve just been given,” Flatley wrote.
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