A 24-year-old woman ran away, climbed over a power station fence and unintentionally shocked herself after scaling an electrical tower in an attempt to escape a man who had held her at gunpoint and sexually assaulted her, according to a Little Rock police report.
The woman, whom police did not identify, "appeared to be burned all over," according to the report.
About 8,000 Entergy Arkansas customers in the city's far west corridor lost power at about 3:30 a.m., according to a statement released by the company. Technicians restored power by 9:30 a.m.
Police did not say the woman's injuries and the loss of power were related, but a statement from Entergy Arkansas said the outage was caused by "an unauthorized person entering the substation on Kanis Road near Chenal Parkway and making contact with energized equipment."
The statement said one person was injured in the substation and taken to a hospital.
Little Rock police officers arrived at the Promenade at Chenal early Tuesday morning after a report that an assault took place between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m.
The woman told police she had walked from near East Pinnacle Road south to the Wal-Mart Supercenter at the corner of Chenal Parkway and Cantrell Road to use a phone to call her boyfriend for a ride to his home. That's where she met the assailant, who was working the overnight shift at the supercenter, and asked him for a ride to her boyfriend's home. The woman told police she didn't know the man's name but that he'd given her rides before.
While driving southeast on Chenal Parkway, the man pulled out a gun, pointed it at the woman's head and threatened to kill her if she didn't perform oral sex on him, the woman told police. The man said he was doing so as "payback for all of the things her people had done to his people for centuries," the report paraphrases the woman as saying.
The woman told police she began to perform oral sex on the man but got out of the car when it stopped at the intersection with Kanis Road.
The woman ran west, followed by the assailant in his car, toward the Entergy Arkansas power station near 17316 Kanis Road, she told police. She climbed the fence and barbed wire surrounding it, then climbed the station tower until an electrical shock knocked her to the ground, the woman told police.
She then ran toward the Promenade at Chenal, about a half-mile to the north, where she ran into a man who encouraged her to call police, the report said.
Emergency responders transported the woman to the emergency room at Baptist Health, and eventually she was transferred to Arkansas Children's Hospital's burn unit for further treatment.
Police searched the area for the assailant, who they said was reportedly driving a Toyota Camry, but did not find him. Police also attempted to watch security footage at the supercenter, but the store's employees were unable to operate the system, police said.
Metro on 10/05/2016