Passenger woman assaults and gropes people at Salt Lake City hair salon

SALT LAKE CITY – A Ballpark neighborhood business is calling for change after the owner said a homeless woman assaulted two people in her living room. The situation came out of nowhere and was filmed.

What was a former car garage is now a place of modern beauty and relaxation.

Randy Topham renovated the building at 1010 S. State Street three years ago and moved his longtime Cake Hair Salon business from downtown to the Ballpark neighborhood.

The move came after much research, he said, and after learning about the city’s plans to revitalize State Street.

Since then, Topham has created the living room space he has always dreamed of.

“Always every time I look at it it’s like a dream when we’re inside. The interior is perfect,” he said.

It’s the exterior that he says is a challenge, and it has only gotten worse recently.

Topham recounted the different things he had to face. On some occasions he had problems several times a day.

“Sometimes it’s just people coming in through the front door and yelling at us and yelling obscenities,” said the salon owner. “Sometimes it’s people walking into our parking lot and doing things there. We’ve had several different groups of passengers who think it was a good idea to come and cut our power lines.”

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But Topham never knew the situation that unfolded in Cake’s lobby on Saturday.

Newly installed surveillance cameras show a woman wandering inside. She comes off the screen and Topham said the woman had sat in one of the chairs in the lobby, in a daze.

He walked over to ask her how he could help her.

“All of a sudden she roared and just jumped on me and attacked me,” Topham said.

The woman ran her hands across product shelves, throwing items everywhere, he added. He was going to try to get the woman back outside, but Topham said the woman tried to turn and pause for the back of the living room.

They got into a fight.

“We shot in sight [of the security camera], and she fell and I tried to hold her in place so she couldn’t punch and kick me, ”he said.

The video shows Topham holding the woman to the ground. Suddenly the woman starts to look up at him.

“She mowed down a loogie and spat on me, and I kind of jumped and backed up,” he recalls.

At this point, a first-time salon client gets up from a chair and steps in to help. As the man offers his hand to help the woman up, she grabs it.

But as she climbs up from the ground, she puts her other hand in the client’s pocket. Topham said the woman then groped the customer.

Finally, the woman is pushed outside and leaves.

Topham said the same woman walked into the living room another time and started laughing as she groped Topham as he tried to get her to leave.

Not only are people entering the street like this woman did, but Topham said he saw issues with people camping in an empty parking lot on the other side of the building next to his own.

Topham says he has called the police several times, but they can only answer a fraction of the time. Officers responded on Saturday and Salt Lake City Police confirmed that a detective would take charge of the investigation to continue the criminal prosecution.

But Topham described how some of the less aggressive issues are not properly addressed.

“I talked to the police about it a lot,” Topham said. “And they say they have their hands tied, they do whatever they can to help, but they are understaffed and so there is only a limit to what they are allowed to do, unfortunately. , to the passing population. “

Hearing this, Topham said he also contacted Salt Lake City Council as well as the mayor’s office and the Homeless Engagement and Response Team.

He was also not satisfied with what they told him.

“I think so many of these passing people need our help and I think we have to give it to them,” Topham said. “We can’t just look blindly the other way and say, ‘Leave them alone.’ Because what you allow, you promote. If you allow anarchy, then that’s what you get. “

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SLCPD Sgt. Brandon Shearer said he has received an increase in calls over the past two months in that region. They received at least 9-10 calls from Cake Hair Salon, mostly for trespassing.

When calls increase in a specific area, he explains that they will devote more resources to it.

Shearer explained how social workers in the city often try to offer resources to homeless people.

“I think the important thing to remember is that being homeless is not a crime,” he said.

The Ballpark neighborhood has received numerous complaints from residents and businesses about crime for over a year, and Shearer explained some of the steps taken to engage with the community.

He said last week they hosted “Coffee with a Cop” in the Ballpark neighborhood.

“Our community liaison officer assigned to this area worked closely with community members to identify the type of issues they are having and help them resolve them in a timely manner,” he said.

Topham wants to see more action at the administrative and city council level.

He hopes the city can work on policies to address the issues as he strives to keep his living room that perfect dream space – both inside and out.

“I hope we can make changes in the future so that we don’t have these challenges,” he said.