Baltimore police arrested a 26-year-old man Friday on charges related to the vicious attack of a 31-year-old woman walking to her Upper Fells Point home last month.
Kurt Fletcher of the 2500 block of Oakley Ave., in Northwest Baltimore, was charged with second-degree attempted murder, first-degree assault and robbery, police said.
Fletcher is accused of attacking Lauren Hayden as she was walking home with a friend at about 1:30 a.m. on July 22 in the 1800 block of Bank Street. Hayden was thrown to the ground and dragged through the street by the hair before her assailant fled with her purse. Hayden fractured her skull and had scrapes all over her body, according to her family. She was treated for a traumatic brain injury at University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center.
"We're relieved," said Hayden's father, Robert Hayden. "If this guy did this then he needs to be off the streets."
He said he and his wife have been caring for their daughter at their Baltimore County home since she left the hospital a week ago. He said he was appreciative that the police were able to make an arrest so quickly and that so many of her friends and neighbors supported her. A GoFundMe page had raised nearly $41,000 as of Friday for Hayden, a marketing project manager at T. Rowe Price, according to her dad.
He said police told him detectives were able to use surveillance videos in the area to identify Fletcher. Several similar attacks have taken place throughout Fells Point in recent weeks, he said. He does not want his daughter to move back to her new home – "she just made her first mortgage payment," he said—but that she was determined to return to the city.