A Missed Connection

Another time he kicked in the bedroom door of their apartment, splintering the wood. He slammed his head against the bathroom wall, making a hole in the plasterboard. He punched Portillo in the face. He held his hands to her throat, saying that if he couldn't have her, no one could. Finally, Portillo's mother had seen enough. She told Guandique to leave her apartment and stay away from her daughter.

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At 1:15 on the afternoon of May 7, Guandique broke into the apartment of Tomasa Orellana, a neighbor on Somerset Place. He was wearing red work gloves, black pants and a baseball cap, and was carrying three screwdrivers -- a poor man's burglary kit. He snatched a gold wedding band. But Orellana came home sooner than expected and saw Guandique, whom she recognized from the neighborhood, crouching in a corner of her bedroom. She screamed, and Guandique took off.

Orellana called the police, who began to look for the suspect. He was 5-foot-8, 140 pounds, with black hair, deep brown eyes, a broad forehead and a flat nose that looked as though it had been broken before. When officers spotted him a few blocks away, they found the screwdrivers and the wedding band in his pockets. Orellana identified Guandique as the man in her bedroom. He was booked on burglary charges and released the same day on a promise to return to court May 29.

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A week after Guandique's burglary arrest, on May 14, Halle Shilling, 30, a tall, blond, athletic aspiring writer, was taking her regular run through Rock Creek Park. Around 6:30 p.m., she started to jog from the Peirce Mill, a former flour operation, while listening to music on her yellow Sony Walkman. As she headed north toward the Western Ridge Trail, she saw a young Hispanic man sitting on the curb of a parking lot near Broad Branch Road. Unknown to Shilling, he got up and ran behind her on a trail that ran along Beach Drive. He let her run another mile or so, deeper into the park.

At the top of the hill, Shilling sensed that someone was behind her. She thought it was another runner, and she slowed to let him pass. Instead, the Hispanic man jumped on her back and grabbed her around the throat. They fell to the ground and tussled on the trail. The hum of the rush-hour traffic below drowned out her screams.

She saw his knife.

"No! No! No!" she shouted.

"Shhh," the man ordered.

Shilling jammed her fingers into her attacker's mouth, digging her nails beneath his tongue, as she had been taught in a self-defense class years earlier. The man bit her fingers, but released her and ran off. Shilling made her way to a U.S. Park Police station. She reported the crime and said she didn't believe her assailant was trying to rob her. He didn't take her Walkman or her large diamond engagement ring. She thought he was trying to rape or kill her.

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