2-on-1 Black Attack on White Woman in Walmart Car Park

KPTV
July 7, 2014

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Lauri Kennedy was attacked when she politely asked a female Black if she could move aside to let her out of the car park.

What started with a driver trying to back out of a parking spot escalated into a 2-on-1 attack, police say.

“I’ve got a couple of bumps,” Lauri Kennedy said, describing her injuries. “A real bad one here in back.”

She’s still treating the wounds from an unexpected attack.

“I never in a million years thought it would escalate like that, because I was very polite,” Kennedy said.

She said it started with a simple request in the parking lot of a Battle Ground Walmart on Wednesday night.

“I said, ‘excuse me, would you mind pulling up a little bit so I could get out?'” she said.

Kennedy was stuck. An SUV parked behind her car as she was getting ready to back out, and two women were standing outside the car talking with the driver.

So, Kennedy asked again.

“‘Excuse me, ma’am, could you please have them move forward so I can leave?’ Exact tone,” she said.”

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The suspects.

She never expected the response to come like it did.

“She goes, ‘what do you want me to do?’ and got real aggressive,” Kennedy said. “She said, ‘what do you want me to do, grab your face?'”

That’s exactly what she said came next. She got out of her car to defend herself.

“She grabbed a hold of my hair and I was down on the ground and they were both punching me,” Kennedy said.

She managed to get away, but so did her attackers.

Surveillance cameras captured an image of the car the women were standing near. Kennedy hopes that will be enough to bring someone to justice.

“It was scary,” she said. “It was very scary.”

Kennedy said if she were to do one thing differently, she would have stayed in the car, rolled up the window and called 911.

Battle Ground Police ask anyone with information to come forward.

They describe one subject as a black woman in her 20s, short, heavy and with hair in a ponytail. They other is described as a black woman, possibly in her teens, tall and slender with her hair in a bun.