Page One

POLICE BRIEFS

Saturday May 19, 2001

A woman was battered and raped by two men who forced her into a bathroom on the Berkeley School District’s east campus about 2 a.m. Tuesday, police said. 

Formerly the home of the district’s continuation high school, the campus is used for administrative offices and some classes today, said Berkeley Police Lt. Russell Lopes.  

Lopes said the bathroom was apparently left unlocked during the night Tuesday through oversite. 

The woman was originally approach by her two assailants while walking home along Ashby Avenue, Lopes said. 

Police found evidence of alleged drug use inside the bathroom where the attack occurred. 

The victim was transported to Highland Hospital where she was treated for minor injuries and released. Police have no suspects in the case. 

••• 

A brawl between half a dozen teenage girls wielding baseball bats and knives ended with two injuries and four arrests Tuesday, according to police. 

Lt. Lopes said the fight, was apparently the result of a long-term feud between two families living in different units of a south Berkeley apartment building,. 

The fight began about 3 p.m. when a 16-year-old girl allegedly assaulted a 15-year-old girl in a stairwell, striking her repeatedly in the head with a baseball bat. 

The initial attack lead to a series of alleged retaliatory attacks by members of the victim’s family, Lopes said.  

When the police arrived at the scene, on the 2900 block of Mabel Street near Ashby Avenue, they found a number of teenage girls still screaming at each other, bats in hand, Lopes said.  

Several windows had been broken out in the apartment building. 

The initial victim was transported to Alta Bates hospital with a “severe head injury”, Lopes said.  

Another girl was treated at Alta Bates for a severe cut in her hand caused when someone threw a knife through the air, Lopes said. 

Three teenagers and one adult involved in the brawl are in police custody, Lopes said. There is a warrant for the arrest of a fifth suspect, the 16-year-old who began the fight and fled the scene before police arrived Tuesday. 

••• 

Police are on the lookout for a man who they say has committed at least seven bank robberies in the last two months – three of them in Berkeley. 

The suspect struck Wednesday at the Bank of America at 1536 Shattuck Ave.  

Just before closing time the man, who police described as a black male in his late 30s, around 5 feet 10 inches and 170 pounds, wearing dark, wrap around sunglasses, allegedly passed a note to a Bank of America teller saying he had a gun and was demanding money. 

The man escaped with a “large quantity” of cash, Lopes said. 

Police believe the same man is responsible for similar bank robberies at two other Shattuck Avenue banks, one as recent as last Friday, Lopes said.