SEQUIM — A 22-year-old woman who was riding her bicycle fought off an assailant wearing a Halloween mask at about 8:30 a.m. Saturday.
The man attacked her while she was riding on a trail west of Railroad Bridge Park by East Runnion Road, Clallam County Sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Lyman Moores said.
Authorities were looking for the man Saturday afternoon.
The assailant stands about 6 feet tall, weighs about 200 pounds and is believed to be in his early 20s.
He was wearing baggy pants and a gray or charcoal-colored hooded sweatshirt.
The woman — who is about 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighs 135 pounds — was scratched but otherwise unharmed during the assault.
“She got some scratches from wrestling on the ground with him,” Moores said.
Moores said a Bowie knife found at the scene of the struggle was not used in the attack. It will be tested for DNA.
Moores said the woman was riding on the trail and saw a man wearing a hoodie walking ahead of her.
She was passing on the left when he turned around wearing the Halloween mask.
“It was white with some red on it,” Moores said, adding that the woman couldn’t recognize the face it depicted.
The man knocked her to the ground with her feet still in the toe clips of the bicycle, Moores said.
“She fought with him on the ground,” he said.
The woman “screamed bloody murder,” Moore said.
“She kept kicking at him and screaming, and he tried twice to attack her, and he finally got up and raised his arms as if to say, ‘Enough,’” Moores said.
“He raised his arms as if like, ‘OK, I give up.’”
Neighbors came out as the man fled, Moores said.
The woman provided a good example of what to do if attacked, Moores said.
“Don’t give up,” he said. “Just keep fighting.”
After the woman fought off the assailant, he ran down the trail and fled in a faded 1980s- or 1990s-model blue or gray car parked in the parking lot, Moores said.
Authorities also want to question the driver of a boxy white van that seemed to follow the assailant’s getaway car out of the parking lot, Moores said.
That driver could be an important witness, Moores said, adding that it is unknown if the driver is linked to the assailant.
Anyone with information about the assault is asked to phone Detective Tom Reyes at 360-417-2372.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.