“Just woman after woman after woman,”
About two hours later, the FBI said, a man posing as an undercover police officer from the area after soliciting her to engage in prostitution. He then drove her hundreds of miles to his home in southern Oregon, where he locked her in a makeshift cell in his garage — a cinder block cage with a metal door, charging papers say. She escaped by punching the door, bloodying her knuckles, until it broke.
The July 15 abduction is one of at least three cases in the past year in which police say women engaged in prostitution along Aurora Avenue or otherwise be rescued after being held against their will, and it raised questions about the consequences of tolerating an open sex market along the busy thoroughfare.
The defendant in that case, Winston Burt, was arrested soon after and now faces federal sex trafficking and gun charges. He has pleaded not guilty. “The Aurora Avenue North corridor has been a longstanding public safety challenge with human trafficking, street prostitution, drug dealing, and gun violence,” Jamie Housen, a spokesperson for Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, said in an email.
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