KINGSTON — Jerri Bagley, 66, remembers when she was a junior high schooler walking home from school and a man tried to talk her into getting into his car and exposed himself. A few years later, another man tried to drag her into his running car.
“I did not leave the house for days,” she recalled to Kitsap County Superior Court in July 2016. “This is when I was diagnosed with PTSD.”
Being assaulted on Aug. 22, 2015 outside the coffee stand next to the Kingston ferry landing has “brought all of these memories back, and I again find myself fearful of men.”
Vincent Edward Geddes, 52, of Arlington changed his plea on Feb. 27 to guilty in the August 2015 assault on Bagley, and was sentenced to 364 days in jail with 354 days suspended for a year. He will reportedly wear an ankle bracelet for the 10 days that were not suspended. A $5,000 fine was suspended.
Geddes was also ordered to pay $700 in various court costs and a $100 contribution to the Kitsap County Expert Witness Fund. He was also ordered to have no contact with Bagley.
Geddes was originally charged with malicious harassment; he pleaded guilty to fourth-degree assault.
Kitsap Daily News left a phone message Feb. 28 for Geddes’ attorney, Patrick Trivett of Marysville.
At about 7:30 p.m. the day of the assault, Bagley — a liveaboard at the Port of Kingston Marina — was walking through the line at the coffee shop when a couple commented on her clothing and hairstyle, and asked her if she were a “dyke” and if she bought her clothing at Salvation Army.
The couple was later identified as Geddes and his girlfriend.
“I asked them, ‘What’s the problem?’ … I told him he must be a small man to talk to a 64-year-old woman like that,” she said (she was 64 at the time). “He said, ‘I’ll show you small’ and unzipped his pants.”
When Bagley took out her cellphone to call 9-1-1, Geddes grabbed her phone and threw it over a fence. Bagley told investigators she was punched in the head about six times and her glasses were knocked to the ground.
Witnesses found her phone. Meanwhile, Geddes and his girlfriend left the scene and motored their 27-foot Bayliner out of the Port of Kingston Marina.
Investigators identified Geddes using information from witnesses on the scene, boaters moored next to Geddes’ boat, port video and the port’s guest log.
One boater said her boat had been docked next to Geddes’ boat the day of the assault and that the couple had been “loud, inappropriate and disrespectful all day.”
In documents filed with the court last summer as attorneys for the prosecution and defense prepared for trial, Geddes had a different recollection of events. He asserted that he and his girlfriend did not instigate or provoke the confrontation between them and Bagley, that they felt they were “in danger” of being assaulted when Bagley confronted them, and that Geddes (described in court documents as 6 feet 2 inches, 190 pounds) struck Bagley (she said she’s 5 feet 9 inches, 160 pounds) only to protect his girlfriend and himself.
In another case involving assault in which the target’s gender identity was questioned, a Bremerton man is charged with felony malicious harassment and fourth-degree assault after he allegedly called a woman and her friends derogatory terms for gays and lesbians, struck one of the women and then head-butted her in the face. David Alan DeWalt, 59, is scheduled to make a court appearance at 9 a.m. March 2 in Superior Court.
