Police wait on forensic tests from quarry attack
Beaten woman wakes after blackout to find man standing over her with a bat
Police are awaiting results of forensic testing to help solve the mystery of what happened to a beaten young woman before she woke in a quarry to a man standing over her with a bat.
The frightening scenario during the early hours of Sunday near Riverhead Forest, north of Auckland, was described to the Herald by Detective Senior Sergeant Kim Libby.
He said the 23-year-old woman, who was last seen in Ponsonby about 10.20pm on Saturday night, “can’t remember anything” and experienced a “two-to-three-hour” blackout.
The results from forensic tests might take some time, Libby said, but would help police understand how the injured woman woke four hours later and 25km away.
The tests may also indicate if she was sexually assaulted or had been drugged earlier in the night, he said.
Partying with friends along Ponsonby Rd after the Pride Parade on Saturday, the woman briefly separated from them, intending to meet at a Karangahape Rd bar later on.
Instead she woke in the quarry near Sawmill Rd to the horrifying sight of a man standing over her with a bat.
“She yelled at him, got up and ran away and managed to escape. It was obviously very dark at the time,” Libby said.
Partially clothed, but still in possession of her cellphone, she managed to call police about 2.12am.
“She didn’t know where she was, so there was a bit of a difficultly finding her,” Libby said of the 111 call.
“She was obviously very distressed at the time, and the main thing was trying to establish where she was. The difficulty was trying to pinpoint her [location].”
A police officer found the injured woman in a timber yard near Sawmill Rd an hour later.
They scoured the area for the man with the bat, but he had disappeared.
The woman suffered a gash to her head and a broken thumb. She has since been discharged from hospital.
Libby said the woman could only provide a “very scant” description of the offender, but he added police were “narrowing down on a vehicle”.
“It’s a remote area, you need a car to go there . . . Someone probably needs to know the area to go there.”
Libby said Riverhead had a small cluster of industrial businesses, but initial police inquiries had resulted in no witnesses from the time of the attack.
Police are also still searching for a man seen on CCTV footage speaking to the woman about 10.20pm near a Mobil service station at the corner of Ponsonby and Karangahape roads.
He is believed to be the last man to talk to the woman before she woke.
“Our focus is identifying the man [at the service station] . . . He may be innocent, but he’s also the last person we know that was with that girl,” Libby said. “There were lots of people out and about and we want to hear from anyone who was in Ponsonby and recognises this man.”
The video shows the man wearing a long-sleeved collared shirt, shorts, and black or navy-coloured Nike sneakers, police said.
“This is a very disturbing, nasty attack on a young woman and we are doing everything we can to find the man responsible,” Libby said.
“She is extremely traumatised by what has happened to her.”
Anyone with information is asked to contact police on 021 191 4085.