AndrewBlakeMountlake Terrace, WA – A 32-year-old mother is in critical condition after a stranger broke into her apartment complex and beat her with a metal cooking pot until the handle broke off.
Police arrested 29-year-old Christopher Yacono at the scene, and charged him with the attack on Thursday, according to the Seattle Times.
The incident began at about 5 p.m. on April 16 when Yacono claimed that he went to his girlfriend’s home, next door to the victim, to retrieve his cell phone, KOMO-TV reported.
Initially, Yacono told police he had heard a woman’s screams and broke down her front door, the Seattle Times reported.
He claimed he saw her lying on the floor severely injured, and then got a beer from her fridge and went outside, according to the probable-cause statement.
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However, Yacono changed his story during later questioning by police and confessed to attacking the woman.
Yacono told police that when he left his girlfriend’s home, “something told him to go into” the duplex next door, according to KOMO.
When nobody answered the door, he kicked in the door of the upstairs residence, went inside, and began smashing and breaking things.
Mountlake Terrace Police Commander Mike Haynes said that the two men who lived in the upstairs unit ran down the hallway and hid in a closet and called 911.
The 32-year-old woman who lived in the downstairs apartment with her mother and three-year-old daughter went to the upstairs unit to find out what the commotion was, and was brutally attacked.
According to court documents, Yacono grabbed the woman and slammed her head into the wall.
When she fell to the ground, he repeatedly slammed her head against the hardwood floor until she was left twitching.
But her attacker still wasn’t done.
Yacono went to the refrigerator, grabbed a beer bottle, and threw it at the woman’s head so hard that the bottle broke.
Then he grabbed a metal cooking pot and smashed it against her head until the handle broke.
Afterwards, Yacono helped himself to another beer and went out into the front yard where he met police.
He was taken to the police station where he became agitated, police said.
Yacono told police he didn’t know why he attacked the woman and didn’t know anyone who lived in the duplex, the Seattle Times reported.
The suspect told police he was off his medications and was having a mental episode at the time of the attack.
The 32-year-old victim survived surgery and was put into a medically induced coma. A nursing supervisor at Harborview Medical Center told The Seattle Times that the woman remained in intensive care as of Thursday.
Her mother and daughter were not harmed in the attack, KOMO reported.
On April 19, Yacono was charged with first-degree assault and residential burglary for his Monday attack.
Bail was initially set at $300,000, but Yacono was held without bail for violating his community custody on a 2016 first-degree arson charge, the Seattle Times reported.
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