Moment homeless man attacks Amazon deliverer with a baseball bat leaving her with a fractured skull

A homeless man in Seattle was charged with first-degree assault after he was caught on surveillance footage ‘taking a full body swing’ with a baseball bat and hitting a woman in the back of the head, leaving her bleeding with a fractured skull.

Wantez Tulloss, 31, was charged on Friday with first-degree assault after Seattle police positively identified him as the man seen attacking the woman in surveillance footage on January 31 just before 6.30pm.

The video shows the unnamed woman walking down the street in the city’s Belltown neighborhood wearing a black jacket and a KN95 face mask, with a shopping bag in hand, when a man wearing all black comes up behind her.

He then dropped the bags he was carrying and whacked her from behind with both hands on a baseball bat.

The woman, who has only been identified as an Amazon employee, immediately fell face-down as the man walked away. Police say Tulloss went to get a slice of pizza after the attack.

The career criminal has been arrested 26 times since 2008, including for first-degree robbery, theft, assault and three violations for breaking orders of protection in domestic violence cases. 

‘The defendant is a significant danger to the community and very likely to commit a violent offense if he remains out of custody,’ King County prosecutors argued in probable cause documents. 

Tulloss was jailed on a $150,000 bond. If convicted, he faces up to 12 years in prison.

Authorities say Tulloss had not known the woman prior to the attack just before 6.30pm last Monday, and the victim, who has not been named, told detectives she could not figure out why someone would attack her as she walked home that night. 

Medics on the scene last Monday found the woman, whose family is all overseas, lying on her back on the sidewalk with blood coming from her right ear.

Witnesses on the scene told officers they had just left their own apartment building and started walking that night, when they got a bad feeling after seeing a man swinging a baseball bat in the alley and turned around.

They said they heard a sound that made them turn back, and watched Tulloss pick up his bags and walk away with a bat in his hand next to the woman, who had collapsed on the ground.

The witnesses rushed to the woman’s aid and promptly called 911, the Seattle Times reports.

The victim is now being treated for a fractured skull and a possible concussion at Harborview Medical Center, and is set to undergo surgery. 

Meanwhile, Seattle police circulated the video of the incident with a photo of the suspect and received a response from a fellow officer who identified the suspect as Tulloss the next day.

The officer said he remembered seeing the man downtown on January 28 because of his distinctive checkered facial tattoos and used a police database to look for individuals with them.

During the course of the investigation, police learned Tulloss lives at the AL Humphrey House, a transient housing facility run by Plymouth Housing as part of the city’s Housing First strategy – in which the homeless are given shelter with no conditions before being provided with services to address the underlying causes of their homelessness, KTTH reports. 

According to its website, Plymouth Housing creates a ‘non-judgmental space’ for its residents to ‘make changes if, and when they are ready.’

The AL Humphrey House is located less than 500 feet from where the woman was hit.

Following Tulloss’s arrest, Seattle police officers obtained a search warrant for his apartment at the facility and found the clothes he was wearing in the video footage hidden in the oven.

And while the bags he was seen carrying were also recovered, police did not find a baseball bat. 

The attack comes amid an increase in violent crimes within the city.

According to the Seattle Police Department’s 2021 Crime Report, robberies were up 18 percent over the year before and aggravated assaults were up a whopping 24 percent, leading to a 10 percent increase in violent crimes.

In total, the city reached a 14-year high in violent crimes. 

Shootings, meanwhile, increased by 40 percent over 2020, with 143 resulting in a non-fatal injury and 31 resulting in a fatal injury.

To address the growing problem Mayor Bruce Harrell unveiled a proposal to hire more officers on Friday night to respond to crimes in the city as the police force remains below staffing levels.

Last year, Interim Police Chief Adrian Diaz said the Seattle police force needed a minimum of 1,400 officers to deal with the city’s crime rate, but there are now fewer than 1,000 deployable officers and the department has only budgeted for 1,350 officers, KOMO reports.

And following the mayor’s announcement, Seattle police ended up investigating a string of shootings over the weekend, including a gun battle in Capitol Hill in which more than 40 bullets were fired and a shooting in the Seattle Chinatown-International District.

Critics say more needs to be done to address the increasing crime rate, but when Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison announced she was changing policy to make charging decisions against all of the accused within five days, she was met with opposition, specifically by City Councilmember Andrew Lewis, who argued that repeat offenders who are habitually prosecuted for minor crimes will continue to offend.  

Victoria Beach, a member o the African American Community Advisory Council to Seattle Police, also suggested the department bring in outside help. 

‘With all respects to our mayor, the problem is way bigger bigger than I think a lot of people imagined,’ she said, adding: ‘I’m so tired of hearing this plan and their broken promises. We have to be real with each other: We’re in a mess.’