Mother hopes for justice after son, girlfriend attacked on way home from work - East Idaho News
Local

Mother hopes for justice after son, girlfriend attacked on way home from work

  Published at  | Updated at

POCATELLO – A mother is searching for answers nearly a week after her son and his girlfriend were brutally beat up while walking home.

The couple works food service jobs in Pocatello and finished their shifts around 3 a.m. Saturday. They met up with a friend, had a drink at the First National Bar on Center Street and left for their apartment a few blocks away.

“They were walking past an alley where a friend of theirs owns a skate shop,” Laura Childers, the mother of the man who was beat up, tells EastIdahoNews.com. “They made it past his place and had just entered the alley by Maag pharmacy when a guy who lives in an apartment there saw them and confronted them.”

Childers says the man accused the couple of breaking into businesses and “crawling up fire escapes to rob people.” They didn’t know who he was and turned back to walk to their friend’s skate shop for help.

“By the time they made it back, four men rolled up in a black Subaru. (My son) heard one of the guys say, ‘These two jumped me. Let’s get them,’” Childers says. “They did a choke takedown on him and began beating him. They dislocated his shoulder and kept punching him.”

RELATED | Two stabbed, two beaten in Pocatello altercation

Childers says her son’s girlfriend was screaming and pulled out a knife, which she had never used but carried for safety reasons. She told the men she had the knife and that’s when Childers says two of the guys started beating her.

“They had her on the ground and were punching her head. She took her knife and, with her eyes closed, stabbed straight up and got one of the guys in the stomach,” Childers says.

The man, who had been stabbed, rolled off the woman and she then stabbed the other man who on top of her, according to Childers.

A man living in a nearby apartment heard the commotion and the woman screaming. He opened his door and fired a gunshot in the air.

Surveillance video from a West Center Street business, reviewed by the Idaho State Journal, appears to corroborate the account of the man and his girlfriend.

“Everybody jumped up, and all four of those guys took off in the Subaru,” Childers says. “(My son and his girlfriend) ran all the way home and called me.”

Childers went over to their apartment and told them to immediately go to the hospital. Police were called to Portneuf Medical Center, where the men who had been stabbed were being treated along with Childers’ son and his girlfriend.

“I’m frustrated that it’s been a week and nobody has been arrested,” Childers says. “My kids have never been involved in violent activity, and this was self-defense. Some people are saying this was a bar fight, but it was not a bar fight.”

Childers says her son and his girlfriend “are scared for their lives” and worried that the men involved in the fight will “come looking for them.”

EastIdahoNews.com is not identifying the parties involved for safety reasons.

A spokesman with the Pocatello Police Department tells EastIdahoNews.com this is a “complex case” that is requiring a lot of follow-up. Nobody has been taken into custody, and detectives have reviewed surveillance video of the incident.

Childers hopes the men involved in the attack are arrested and brought to justice before other people are victimized.

“In Pocatello, Idaho it’s reasonable to assume you could walk home and not be killed,” Childers says. “This is not Compton.”

SUBMIT A CORRECTION