Homeless man charged in attack
Gallery worker accosted with cord
A homeless man accused of wrapping a cord around the neck of a woman working at a South End gallery and dragging her screaming toward the back had five active warrants out for his arrest when he was caught, according to court records.
Michael J. Powers, 34, had warrants in connection with drug possession in Boston, larceny under $1,200 in Abington, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, breaking and entering, larceny from a person, vandalizing property and trespassing in Lowell, according to a Boston police report.
Powers was ordered held on $20,000 cash bail Tuesday after pleading not guilty to indecent assault and battery, kidnapping, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, making a threat to commit a crime, assault and battery, and assault with a dangerous weapon in connection with Sunday’s attack.
Officers responding to a report of a person screaming arrived at the Kingston Gallery on Thayer Street, where a 28-year-old employee told them she was getting ready to close shortly before 5 p.m. when a man came in, walked around and asked if she was closing soon, the police report said.
The man then reached into his backpack and took out a cord, which he wrapped around her neck, pulling her to the floor and dragging her to the back of the gallery, where walls obscure the view of passersby, the report said.
The assailant told the woman, “If you stop screaming, I won’t kill you,” she told officers, but she managed to get to her feet and continued to scream and yell, “Call 911!” and “Stop him! Somebody stop him!”
A witness who heard her screams told police he saw a man run out of the Kingston Gallery in the direction of the Sunday SoWa open-air market, the report said.
As the man fled through the market, a woman tried to block him, police said, but he grabbed her breasts and pushed her against a parked car.
Another witness told officers he grabbed the assailant’s back and tackled him with the help of another person. But the suspect managed to get back up and run in the direction of Albany Street, where he jumped a fence into the courtyard of the Pine Street Inn, a homeless shelter, where witnesses lost track of him.
Barbara Trevisan, a spokeswoman for the Pine Street Inn, said she was prohibited from saying whether Powers lived there. But the police report lists its address as his.
The Boston Regional Intelligence Center released a photo of the assailant taken by a witness, and Powers was arrested shortly before noon Monday on Albany Street after a Boston Public Health Commission officer recognized him, police said.
Powers told detectives that on Sunday he had been inside the gallery, where he had an “altercation” with a woman and pulled a black cord out of his backpack before running out, police said. He also said he was the person in the photograph the center had released.
Marie Galvin, who owns a millinery store a few doors from the gallery, said on Tuesday that she was stunned that anyone would attack someone on the same day as the open market.
“It’s so unnerving,” Galvin said. “I’m glad that she survived.”