PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The two good Samaritans who scared off a man accused of sexually assaulting a woman on a Beaverton MAX train platform recounted the story to KOIN 6 on Thursday.
Patrick Vandyke and Travis Nordseth were heading home late Friday night on June 25 when they heard screams and sprinted over the platform. That’s when they saw a man assaulting a woman.
“We just happened to be right train, right time, right platform,” they said.
They got off the MAX at a Beaverton stop and started walking home when they heard screaming.
“It was a scary scream. It sounded like their life was in danger.”
The pair began running toward the platform.
“We both run over there and we see this guy on top of this girl and we both yell at him, ‘Get off her! Get off her!'”
“We start yelling at him and everything to just get out of here go away and he kind of goes running and everything. He gets scared a little bit, we get the young lady out of the situation,” Nordseth said.
The suspect, later identified as William Gilchrist of Portland, walked away and then came back with what appeared to be a razor blade.
Travis called 911 — and Gilchrist walked toward the woods.
“I wasn’t even off the phone with 911 yet and there were three or four cop cars at the MAX platform here and then we could hear, it sounded like about a dozen of them on Murray and Jenkins.”
That’s where a Beaverton PD K9 led officers to Gilchrist near the Nike campus.
“He ends up running into the Nike woods and within minutes the cops are here and they get out with a K9 unit and run into the woods and end up getting the guy,” Vandyke said.
Authorities said Gilchrist was trying to talk to the woman on the train. When she got off, so did he — and that’s when he grabbed and assaulted her.
“It could have been a lot worse if we weren’t here.”
Gilchrist, 36, is facing charges of sex abuse, unlawful use of a weapon and attempted rape.