UPDATE: Gerardo Martin Prado pleaded guilty Nov. 28, 2018, in Clark County District Court to fourth-degree assault with sexual motivation and was sentenced to 364 days in jail, with 327 days suspended. He was given credit for the 37 days he already served, court records show.
A woman who fought off a convicted sex offedner in the public restroom of a Seattle park last year says she was assaulted once again — this time while running a half-marathon in Vancouver over the weekend.
Kelly Herron was participating in the Girlfriends Run for a Cure on Sunday along Southeast Columbia Way when she allegedly encountered Gerardo Martin Prado.
Prado, 30, was charged Monday in Clark County District Court with one count of fourth-degree assault with sexual motivation. He pleaded not guilty to the charge.
Herron said in a phone interview Thursday that she was 12 miles into the race, headed around a curve near the waterfront, when she saw a man coming toward her from the side of the path. At this point in the race, the space between participants had widened. Herron estimated she had about a 30-second gap between the people in front of and behind her.
The man was looking at Herron as if he knew her, she said, and his arms were positioned in a low hug.
“He lunged at me and grabbed my rear end aggressively,” Herron said.
After the groping, the man stared at Herron with a smug smile, she said. The prideful display infuriated Herron.
She spent a moment contemplating what she should do. On the one hand, she was having a great race, she said, but on the other, she felt she had an obligation to ensure the man was held accountable for his actions.
“I started chasing him down, screaming, ‘Assault! Assault!’ hoping someone would hear it,” Herron said.
A spectator sitting on a bench asked her what had happened, and she told them. But by that time, she thought her assailant got away so she finished the race and informed a firefighter and race organizer at the finish line about the unwanted encounter.
According to a probable cause affidavit filed in Prado’s case, Vancouver police were dispatched shortly after 11 a.m. to the 1400 block of Southeast Columbia Way for a report of an assault.
Passers-by told police a man had groped a woman participating in the half-marathon. They followed the man, later identified by police as Prado, as he left the area, because of Herron’s shouting, the affidavit says.
When officers interviewed Herron, she said there were no witnesses to the incident but accurately described Prado, according to the affidavit.
Prado told police he was walking on the trail when Herron ran into him and started screaming. He also claimed Herron was his sister’s friend and denied touching her, according to the affidavit.
This is the second time in less than two years that Herron says she’s found herself in such a situation.
Herron repelled a brutal attack in March 2017 while marathon training in Seattle. She stopped to use a public restroom in Golden Gardens Park when Gary Steiner, who at that time was already a registered sex offender in Arizona, attacked her, she said.
Steiner took Herron to the ground, but she fought him off while repeatedly shouting “Not today, mother (expletive),” a phrase that Herron dubbed her battle cry and an utterance that quickly made headlines.
Steiner was sentenced to three years in prison earlier this year for second-degree assault with sexual motivation, according to the Associated Press.
In deciding her course of action Sunday on the path, Herron recalled Steiner’s sentencing. Prosecutors used the man’s prior convictions in deciding an appropriate punishment.
“It’s important to press charges, to make sure they’re held accountable. Sexual offenders tend to see what they can get away with and then escalate it,” Herron said. “When I looked in (Steiner’s) eyes, I knew he’d done it before, and I knew he’d do it again if he got away with it.”
Since the Seattle assault, Herron has remained vocal about the pervasiveness of sexual assault against women. She also spoke out against a group who started using her story to campaign for overturning the state’s nondiscrimination protections for transgender people.
She’s less than thrilled to be back in the news for another incident of assault. Herron said making herself visible in these situations has been a double-edged sword. There are all kinds of reactions, she said.
“What I did (Sunday in Vancouver) was not an overreaction,” she said. “Women won’t take it anymore. In hearing about things like this, women can prepare and protect themselves and be empowered to speak up.”
Prosecutors offered Prado a pretrial agreement stipulating he would be sentenced to a year in jail, with all but 10 days of the time suspended. But Judge Kristen L. Parcher ordered a competency evaluation for Prado, court records show.
His next hearing is set for Nov. 7. Bail was set at $1,000, plus conditions, such as no drug or alcohol use.
