Woman Sues After Attack At Atm Says Cash Machine Near Road Offers Invitation For Robbers

She needed cash. She had a cash card. He needed cash. He had a knife.

The two came face to face one morning at a cash machine near the airport.

Eleven minutes later, Gina Sims - beaten, bleeding and robbed - staggered onto a busy highway south of Seattle for help.

She survived the attack but spent days in a hospital.

Now, three years later, Sims is suing Washington Mutual Bank, claiming its cash machine at 18400 Pacific Highway South is unsafe. It’s in the middle of a violent-crime area, she said in her lawsuit, with its dispensing side hidden from view and with landscaping that had given her attacker a perfect place to hide.

“I stopped on my way to work to get money for gas,” said Sims, an accountant. What happened “changed my life.”

Throughout the United States there are more cases - and lawsuits - like this one as banks pare staffing, and customers in increasing numbers - some 16 million transactions a day - seek services at automated teller machines.

In Seattle alone, there were a dozen ATM robberies in as many days around Christmas.

Many states, including Washington, have passed laws requiring banks to maintain proper lighting around their ATMs and to instruct customers in basic safety precautions related to their use.

Washington Mutual didn’t do that, Sims claims in her suit, which was filed in King County Superior Court.

The bank disagrees. “When we locate our ATMs, we do so with a mind toward safety,” said bank spokeswoman Libby Hutchinson. “Of course, we would always urge people to exercise good judgment when they access them.”

John Soltys, an attorney for the bank, said, “Whether or not there is anything wrong with (the placement of the cash machine Sims used) will be for a jury to decide.”

Sims, 38, recalled the violence of her March 1995 attack.

It was about 7 a.m. when she pulled up to the SeaTac-area cash machine on her way to work at a manufacturing company. Nobody else was around - or so it appeared.

She got out of the car, walked to the machine and removed a cash card from her purse. Suddenly, a man came up from behind her, grabbed her by the arm and demanded money.

She tried to return to the safety of her car, but the man, claiming he had a knife, dragged her back to the machine and forced her to take out money.

She ran back to her car again, but he followed her. He hit her over and over. Then he grabbed her car keys and ran away.

Sims, choking and unable to scream for help, managed to flag down a motorist who called police. She was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. A short distance away, officers caught the attacker, who later confessed to beating Sims and stealing $40 from her. He was sent to prison.

Sims’ attorney, Amos Hunter, believes the attack might not have happened if the ATM had been more open to public view, in accordance with the law.

Hunter also claims Washington Mutual should have warned customers about the risks of using that ATM. Security expert Bob Wuorenma, who may be called as a witness at the trial, agreed.

“The potential for robberies and assaults committed against ATM customers at the locale … was reasonably foreseeable to Washington Mutual and its security professionals,” he stated in court documents filed with the lawsuit.

According to the court documents, in the year before the attack, King County Sheriff’s deputies handled a host of crimes in the one-mile area of Pacific Highway South in front of the ATM: four rapes or attempted rapes, five highway robberies, one residential robbery, one carjacking and 13 assaults with guns, knives or other deadly weapons.

But even in relatively safer areas, there are risks in withdrawing money from a cash machine.

That’s in part because, from a criminal’s point of view, robbing someone at a cash machine is probably a better bet than holding up a convenience store or service station, where there may be surveillance cameras, the clerk could be armed, and customers could intervene, according to Wuorenma.

The safest cash machines, he added, are inside stores or at drive-through banks, where users can remain inside their cars.

To those who complain that cash machines in stores ask a surcharge, Wuorenma said, “Isn’t your safety worth 50 cents?”