After spending one year in jail leading up to the trial, a 36-year-old woman has been acquitted of felony charges in a bizarre incident last summer in the Tenderloin, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office reported today.
The defendant, Tara Lowe, was arrested on June 15th, 2015, when she was found in possession of stolen jewelry, a wallet and an iPod. Accused of scaling a nine-story fire escape to burglarize an apartment, she faced charges of first-degree residential burglary and grand theft, and up to 17 years in prison if convicted.
The "complaining witness," a 42-year-old man, told police he was making dinner in his 450-square-foot apartment, with his dog at his feet, when his wife returned home. The dog began barking, so his wife investigated, and found Lowe exiting the apartment through a bathroom window.
In his account of the incident, Lowe offered his wife a "harried apology," saying she was locked out after a fight with her boyfriend on the building's third floor, and descended via the fire escape. The man went downstairs as well, via the elevator, when he received a call from his wife that her items had been stolen. He followed Lowe through the streets as she waved a metal pipe threateningly at him, he told authorities.
Lowe, however, had a very different story: she told police that the man invited her upstairs for a sexual encounter, then shoved her out of the bathroom window when his wife returned home unexpectedly.
After one-day of deliberation last week, the jury concluded that the complaining witness' story didn't add up, according to the Public Defender's Office. "Lowe would have had to climb to the ninth floor while intoxicated, dressed in high heels, constricting clothes, and an ankle chain made of jingling bells, then gain entry without burglary tools," the office wrote.
"Furthermore, as [her public defender] argued, it made no sense that a jingling, intoxicated intruder would go unnoticed in the 450-square-foot studio apartment by both the man and his dog." A video shot by a neighbor who helped pursue Lowe on the street also countered claims that she threatened the man with a pipe before her arrest.
In the end, Lowe was convicted of petty theft and sentenced to time already served in jail. That amounted to one year, as she was unable to afford bail ahead of the trial.
