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An American Fork woman has been released from the hospital after police say she was brutally beaten by a door-to-door magazine salesman. The woman was one of a dozen residents who had contact with this salesman yesterday. Many of them say the salesman acted weird and made them uncomfortable.
Yesterday 25-year-old Brian James Mask was going door-to-door in an American Fork neighborhood. Jean Whaley, who lives in the neighborhood, said, "He was trying to sell magazines or something for points." He knocked on Whaley's door just after 6 p.m. "I just said, 'I'm not interested,' went back in and shut the door," she said.
Shortly after, he knocked on her neighbor's door. American Fork police Sgt. Gregg Ludlow says the man invited himself into the home of the 58-year-old woman when she went to sign a paper. Ludlow says the suspect then physically and sexually assaulted her. "We believe she was pretty much left for dead," Ludlow says.
Her attacker got away while she struggled to call for help. "She's suffered some pretty severe trauma. This is a fine lady that just did not deserve to have this happen to her," Chief Lance Call, with the American Fork Police Department, said.
Police interviewed people in the neighborhood to see if anyone had seen Mask before. Jamie Reece says she remembers the salesman. She says he was pushy and kept trying to touch her. Reece said, "He said, ‘I'm going to need to go into the garage.' And I said no. And he said, ‘I mean to find something to sell.'" She was not harmed.
Less than an hour after the attack, police caught Mask. "We got some help from Lehi police, who observed him getting on a bus trying to get back to Salt Lake. They stopped the bus and took him into custody," Call said.
That's good news for the dozens of residents who opened their doors to the salesman yesterday, but many of them won't be opening their doors to strangers in the future.
"Never ever let someone into your home you don't know. The risk is just too high," Call said.
Whaley said, "I'm going to put a no-solicitors sign on my door."
Mask is from St. Louis. He works for an out-of-state company that sells magazine subscriptions. The company didn't have a solicitors license that American Fork requires for such work, so Mask was going door-to-door illegally. He's now in the Utah County jail.
E-mail: corton@ksl.com
E-mail: rjeppesen@ksl.com
