Suspect in attack on tourists arrested in downtown Seattle

Police have arrested a 17-year-old boy in connection with the attack and robbery of three tourists in downtown Seattle on  Monday night.

West precinct bike units spotted the suspect at 11:30 a.m. Friday while patrolling near Pine Street and Third Avenue, which is close to where the attack occurred.

Robbery detectives interviewed the teen and booked him into the Youth Services Center for investigation of robbery, police said.

The three victims  — two women and a man — were near Pine and Third about 11 p.m. on Monday night when they passed a group of men and women on the street. One of the women accused a 23-year-old tourist of bumping into her, police said.

The tourist told The Seattle Times in an interview that she immediately apologized. That’s when the accuser tried to burn her with a cigarette, the victim said.

“As she was doing that, someone else took my phone out of my back pocket,” said the visitor, who didn’t want her name used. “I tried to grab my phone and and someone punched me in the face.”

The woman said she dropped a bag of bottled wine she had been holding. Police say the group then used the broken bottles to attack the woman’s 29-year-old fiancé.

The couple’s companion, a 24-year-old woman, was also punched in the face, according to police.

The fiancé said that when he continued to fight back, one of the assailants pulled up his shirt, moved his hands toward his pants and told the visitors he had a gun and would shoot them, the police report says.

Police say strong-arm robberies in the immediate neighborhood are down 10 percent so far this year compared with the same period in 2014. Robberies involving firearms are down 43 percent.