This is getting really serious! Ladies, have your whistles, panic alarms, and foghorns out and ready, at *ALL* times!!!!

From:

Suspect in holdups, sex attacks sought
Police cite similarities in incidents reported by half-dozen women
By T.J. Pignataro NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: 09/27/07 7:52 AM

Buffalo police believe the same man may be responsible for as many as a half-dozen robberies and sexual attacks on women in the city dating back to last Thursday.

Detectives Wednesday night were piecing together what they believe were significant similarities in the attacks, which frequently have occurred around midnight.

The assailant is a black male in his 20s, about 5 feet 9 inches tall. He has short hair and often has been reported wearing a green or gray hooded sweat shirt that is usually left open. In a couple of the attacks, he appeared to be jogging. He arms himself with a box cutter.

"Women should be aware of this," said Dennis J. Richards, chief of detectives. "Women should be careful and are encouraged not to travel alone".

The first attack occurred just after midnight Thursday on Potomac Avenue near Chapin Parkway. A woman was forced to perform oral sex on the suspect.

Then, less than an hour later, another woman was attacked at Potomac and Brantford Place. The attacker jogged up behind her, displayed a box cutter or knife and said, "Give me all your money." When the victim said she didn't have any, the suspect said, "I am just playing with you," and grabbed her breasts and buttocks.

The next night, just after midnight, another woman was attacked as she left a gas station at Elmwood Avenue and Hodge Street. She was robbed of $300. The suspect asked for oral sex but fled when the woman refused.

Within a half-hour, a 30- year-old woman reported she was accosted by a man at East Delavan Avenue and Spillman Place near the Canisius College Health Science Building. He demanded she follow him to a parking lot where he pulled down his pants and demanded oral sex. She refused and he grabbed her breast and took $15 from her.

Just before midnight Sunday, a fifth woman reported being attacked in the 100 block of Richmond Avenue. The suspect ran ahead of her and then grabbed her, displaying a knife. He took her purse and wallet and then pulled his zipper down and demanded sex. The woman screamed and was punched in the side of the head by the suspect before he fled.

The sixth attack, which police were still trying to link to the other attacks, occurred at 8:15 p.m. Tuesday in the 100 block of Atlantic Avenue. There, the suspect peppersprayed a 30-year-old woman and ripped her purse off her shoulder. No knife was displayed and the suspect did not demand sex, police said.

"There are enough specific things done and said to believe . . . they are related and could be the same perpetrator," Richards said.

The Sex Offense Section and detectives are investigating.

Anyone with information is encouraged to contact detectives at 851-4494.

Just to bring home the point, here is the Mugging crime map of Buffalo.



From a cursory analysis, I would say:
1. The attacker(s) is moving south into posher neighbourhoods.
2. The attacker(s) is attacking *earlier* in the day.
3. The attacker(s) is adding more "weapons" to his arsenal.
4. He(They) is athletic and probably stronger than your average drunken homeless guy.
5. He(They) does not care if you are young or old.
6. and YIKES. This is SO disturbing. :(

If so, where were you mugged and what was extorted out of you? Have you ever thwarted a mugging in Buffalo - either yours or someone else's? What are the ideal weapons that one should carry - would you be likely to be called into court or arrested if you stabbed a potential mugger? And lastly, where would one get the weapons of choice?

I got nearly mugged today, less than an hour back in the semi-dark sidewalk near Delaware and Summer. The creepy character was hiding behind one of the many parked cars on the south side of Summer. As I passed the car he was hiding behind, he tried to spring at me, but I dodged and ran the fastest 30 metres of my life, into my building and up 5 levels of stairs in under 2 minutes!

Though its flattering to find out that I can indeed run and that my lungs are not the mass of solid mud that I previously thought they were, its not so comforting to confront the fact that I could potentially be mugged and that it doesn't always happen to "someone else but not me".

I think its just awful that any creep can have a gun here. At least you can outrun people in countries where guns are outlawed, but unless you are one of those loopy characters in some crazy movies who can dodge bullets, how are you supposed to escape being mugged?? Talk about total unfairness!

Update: My brother just sent me this excellent article:
It has some very sound advice and I think I will just take it *and* get the loudlest little foghorn I can get, so I wake even the dead at Forest Lawn Cemetary, the next time I am mugged.

Update 2: I filed a formal police incident-report.

and any restaurant that allows these vicious chunks of loathsomeness to even come near your food.

I am sure all of you know how evil the common housefly (for the latin among you - Musca domestica) can be. But I constantly come across people who forget the filth and disease that this hideous curse among species can bring to your dining table.



While humans start and end in the earth, the housefly starts and ends in the garbage. As many as 120-200 eggs transform into these revolting harbingers of squalidness at any one time. They most often do so in a bed of warm rotting garbage - the kind that is decomposing and already infested with a variety of other microbes from similar domains of filth.

The loathesome housefly can host up to 30-40 million bacteria in its body and additionally have another billion sticking over the detestable ~12 mm of its revolting body surface - majority of which is covered in dirty sticky coarse hair.

When a fly lands on your sandwich, it first vomits some of its last meal (could be your dog's or your neighbour's excrement) on your sandwich so it could bring up some digestive enzymes to break down the surface of your sandwich and dissolve it. It then treads all over the vomit and your food thus mixing in all the bacteria and parasitic spores and eggs that it picked up from its last shuttle stop, into your sandwich. It then sucks up the semi-solid goo that it created on the surface of your sandwich. As a final touch, it defecates all over your sandwich before leaving for its next victim's tortilla wrap.

Unlike what Neumann lead us to believe, the housefly was never human to begin with and will never be human in any way, especially because it chooses to kill its victims in a most inhuman way.


There are surely better ways to spend your last minutes than lie retching in a hospital and die of complications of gastroenteritis. Do yourselves a favour and avoid restaurants with flies, like the plague. Zap and spray those disgusting minions of excrement at home. Do everything you can to spread the rumours about this nasty demonic insect because all of them are unerringly true.

A good way of getting rid of houseflies without insecticides is to spray them with hairspray -- this affects their ability to fly and thus transfer vermin. You can easily sweep the sprayed flies into garbage, where they rightly belong.

And to the two ladies in the Kaminsky Park today afternoon, who swatted away the flies that landed on their food and continued to eat the entire thing - I hope you got home safe and didn't get any violent dysentery.

I finally went to the city hall today and got my recycle bin!

@@******@@@@******HuRRRRRaYY!******@@@@******@@


O my blue recycle bin
To you my hopes I pin
Over the seas of unrecycled waste
Ferry my plastic and paper with renewed haste!

On a related note, denizens of Elmwood & Around, can you point me to cardboard/plastic/paper recycle drop-off boxes that you may have spotted in and around the Elmwood/Downtown area? I have a ton of cardboard, and milk cardboard cartons that I need to drop-off before I find the right neighbour, whose recycle-box-family I can put my new recycle bin next to.

I know of a couple, but they are a bit of a hike away:
1. On Virginia, on the way to Betty's, across from the fire-station
- Cardboard/Paper drop-off box.

2. On Lafayette Ave, just before the Lafayette-Grant crossing.
- Newspaper drop-off box

Thanks so much for your input!