Machete-wielding woman tries to kidnap 6-year-old outside Oregon pizza shop, cops say
A 37-year-old woman with a machete is accused of attempting to kidnap a child and using racial slurs outside of a pizza shop in Oregon last week, police said.
A 6-year-old boy, his mom and friends were standing in line for pizza in downtown Portland near Voodoo Doughnut when Elizabeth A. Zurcher-Wood walked toward them as she talked to herself, a probable cause affidavit stated.
Zurcher-Wood then accused the mom and her friends of kidnapping her child, the affidavit states.
As they tried to move away from her Zurcher-Wood lunged at the boy, tried to grab him and said she was going to take him back, according to a Portland Bureau Police news release and court documents.
The boy’s mother threw her pizza at Zurcher-Wood and told her to leave them alone, prompting Zurcher-Wood to pull out a machete and call the mom a racial slur, court documents show. The mother is Panamanian and one of her friends is Black.
“That’s my child, give me my kid back. I will kill you guys if you don’t give me the kid,” the mother recalled Zurcher-Wood saying as she swung around a machete, KOIN reported.
Zurcher-Wood then ran off and police said they arrested Zurcher-Wood a few blocks away. They found a machete and ax on her, according to the affidavit.
Zurcher-Wood was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center and faces charges of second-degree attempted kidnapping, two counts of unlawful use of a weapon, two counts of menacing and two counts of first-degree bias crime, better known as hate crime.
Her bail is set at $30,000.
This story was originally published August 25, 2021 at 4:16 PM with the headline "Machete-wielding woman tries to kidnap 6-year-old outside Oregon pizza shop, cops say."
