‘Why Are You So Pretty?’ West Des Moines Woman Asked Before Alleged Assault

A 24-year-old woman reported to West Des Moines police that a man called her by name, complimented her on her looks and then assaulted her while she was taking her trash out to at Westwood Apartments, 258 52nd St.

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Officer Amanda St. George said the victim met her at the door with a hammer in her hand when she responded to the call at 1:58 a.m. Thursday. When she saw St. George was a police officer, she dropped the hammer and began to cry, the policewoman said.

“She said she was relieved she wasn’t alone anymore,” St. George wrote in her report. “She was upset and visibly shaken.”

The woman told St. George that she had taken trash to the communal Dumpster sometime after midnight when was tackled from behind, causing her to fall. She said the unknown assailant who tackled her turned her over and struck her in the face with an unknown object and called her by her first name, saying:

“Damn it … why are you so pretty?”

St. George noted in her report that the victim had abrasions on her face, both above and below the right eye, and along the right side of her jaw. She had a bump on the right side of her head behind her hair line. She also had abrasions on her left shoulder and bruises on her right forearm.

The T-shirt she was wearing had been torn over the left shoulder, and it appeared to have a blood-like substance on the back. The victim told police she did not think the blood belonged to the suspect because she did not strike him.

She told police that she did not have any problems with ex-boyfriends, nor did she know of anyone who was paying extra attention to her.

According to the report, the victim did say she had been “feeling uneasy for the last week or so, she was not sleeping well and could not figure out why. She said she told herself that she was being paranoid and that it was nothing.”

The victim works at a bar and attends cosmetology school full time. Both her job and her school require frequent interaction with the public, she told police.

The victim said the man was wearing all black and had some kind of covering on his face. She did not recognize his voice.

She said that after he struck her in the face, he got up and ran north around the back of the garages and toward the interstate. The victim got up returned to her apartment and called a friend, who urged her to report the assault to police.