Man Arrested After Incident Inside Casper AT&T Store
Casper police officers on Tuesday arrested a man who allegedly walked into the AT&T store inside the Eastridge Mall and assaulted an employee.
K2 Radio News has elected to not publish the man's name, age and photograph, because of the apparent overriding influence of mental illness in the incident.
The man, who will be referred to as "the alleged assailant" throughout this story, was booked into jail on recommended charges of criminal trespass and aggravated assault.
Charging papers say the employee was working when the alleged assailant walked into the store holding a rock and a plastic soda cup containing diarrhea.
The alleged assailant asked the employee, "Are you your brother?"
Without waiting for a response, the alleged assailant slammed the cup of feces onto the counter, "causing the feces to explode everywhere in the store," according to the employee's statement to police as reflected in the affidavit.
After slamming down the cup, the alleged assailant immediately swung at the employee, hitting him one time before the fight went to the ground. The employee was unsure as to what had happened after that, but said mall security broke up the fight almost immediately.
The employee reported a slight pain in the back of his head, but couldn't be sure exactly where he had been hit during the alleged attack. He did not know whether he had been hit with the rock.
Officers arrived shortly after 12:30 p.m. and found the alleged assailant cleaning himself up in the men's bathroom while mall security supervised.
The alleged assailant was "extremely worked up and difficult to understand. [He] bounced frequently between thoughts and uttered sentences that did not make sense or have any correlation to questions being asked," according to the affidavit.
Court documents go on to detail statements made by the alleged assailant to police which appear to demonstrate significant mental illness. The alleged assailant reportedly said he was not taking his medication because it prevented him from sleeping.
The alleged assailant told police that his only previous contact with the store employee was when they had played in a recreational sports league some time ago, but he had never had a conversation with the victim before Tuesday.
The alleged assailant said he was told "on the street by a source" that the employee had molested the alleged assailant's niece. Police were unable to contact the alleged assailant's family members, and officers were unable to develop probable cause that any molestation had occurred.
Court documents say the alleged assailant arrived at the mall to fight the employee. According to the alleged assailant's statement to police, he walked into the store and approached the employee, confirmed the employee's name and began fighting.
The AT&T store was shut down after the incident while police investigated and, later, so that it could be cleaned. According to a posted notice, management hoped to reopen the store on Wednesday.