A woman reported that Theo Orestis followed her and threw suspected semen onto her. Police were presented with an eyewitness and biological evidence sitting on the ground. Three videos now document the victim’s initial report, the detective’s later follow up and the officer interaction that left her collecting the evidence herself.
Portland police had a woman reporting an assault, an eyewitness backing up her account, the accused man close enough for officers to find and suspected biological evidence still sitting on the pavement.
They left the evidence behind. They also sort of left the suspect behind.
Portland police identified the accused as 22 year old Theo Orestis of Falmouth and issued him a summons for Class D assault on the evening of July 22. Their official statement spends an entire paragraph reminding the public that a summons technically counts as an arrest under Maine law, then declares that “the substance involved does not change the classification of this offense.”
“The substance involved does not change the classification of this offense.”
Portland Police Department
That doesn’t answer the criticism. It avoids it. The problem isn’t only what police called the crime on the summons. The problem is that they treated suspected biological evidence as disposable before anyone had collected it, tested it or established exactly what it was.
Her first account raised the alarm
In her initial TikTok report, the woman described being followed by a man who then threw a substance onto her from a small container. She said she pursued him, found an eyewitness, contacted police and tried to preserve what she believed was semen.
Her account was disturbing not only because of the alleged assault, but because of how much work she said she had to do herself. She kept track of the accused man, secured a witness and tried to convince responding officers that the material left behind should be collected.
Portland police later released a much cleaner version of the evening. Their statement says officers responded, found Orestis nearby, interviewed him and issued a summons. It says nothing about the argument over the biological material or why the woman ended up preserving it herself.
The detective followed up after she saved it
In a second video, the woman said a detective later contacted her and retrieved the articles containing the material she had collected. She said the substance might now be tested and spoke positively about the detective who handled the follow up.
That later response didn’t repair what happened at the scene. The detective had evidence to retrieve only because the woman ignored the message she received during the original response and decided the material was worth protecting.
Had she left it where police left it, the substance could’ve been contaminated, destroyed or literally blown away before anyone decided it might matter.
Then she released the officer interaction
The third and most recent video fills in the part Portland police omitted from their public statement. It includes footage of the woman and an eyewitness trying to convince a responding officer that the suspected biological evidence should be preserved.
They raise the possibility of DNA testing, identifying the source and preserving information that could matter if the accused man had done this before or escalated later. The officer doesn’t appear confused about what they’re asking. He explains that biological evidence is more likely to be tested when police are dealing with a more serious class of crime, says a DNA profile would still need to connect with someone already in the system and tells them that witness statements and nearby surveillance footage will probably be their strongest evidence.
This wasn’t evidence officers accidentally overlooked. The woman and the eyewitness were standing there explaining why it mattered while an officer explained why the system probably wouldn’t bother doing anything with it.
In text added to the recording, the woman says she’d been begging the officer to take the evidence and was told to let the napkins holding it blow away in the wind. The recorded portion doesn’t clearly capture that exact sentence, but it does show the larger conversation that ended with police leaving the material behind. I’m just curious why the Portland Police, even if it isnt a crime, is okay with just walking away from semen covered litter in our communities? You want us to let you into our schools to teach our kids to ride bikes safely but you can’t be expected to pick up semen covered trash so the community at large doesnt have to? Cool cool cool.
The footage then shows the woman wearing medical gloves, crouching beside the road and collecting the suspected semen herself. She’d already reported that a stranger followed her and threw it onto her body. Portland police left her to handle it again because they’d decided their other evidence was good enough.
The charge doesn’t excuse the failure
Portland police have tried to redirect the conversation toward legal classification. Their statement says the incident met the elements of ordinary assault and that the substance didn’t change the charge.
Whether Maine’s criminal code calls this simple assault or sexual assault doesn’t make the act any less sexual or violating. Orestis is accused of getting out of a truck, following a woman and throwing semen onto her from a small container. The narrow name printed on the summons doesn’t explain why the substance itself wasn’t treated as evidence.
Police also couldn’t know the material was irrelevant. They hadn’t tested it. It could confirm what the substance was, identify an unsafe contaminant or become important if another woman reports a similar encounter. Officers refused to preserve evidence and then publicly insisted that the nature of that evidence didn’t matter.
Other women are watching
The woman did far more than anyone should reasonably be expected to do after an assault. She kept track of the man she says attacked her, found an eyewitness, called police while everything was still fresh, pointed officers toward physical evidence and then preserved it herself when they wouldn’t.
Most women won’t be able to do all of that, and they shouldn’t have to. They won’t all feel safe following the person responsible. They won’t all have a witness willing to stay, medical gloves nearby or the energy to argue with an officer who’s calmly explaining why the evidence of what happened to them probably won’t go anywhere.
Some will take that first refusal as their answer. They’ll go home, wash their clothes and decide there’s no point in asking police to care about something officers have already classified as minor.
Portland police didn’t just leave some napkins on the pavement. They showed every woman watching how much of an investigation she may have to conduct herself before the department decides the evidence of her assault matters.
She reported what happened. She preserved the evidence. She forced the follow-up and then released the footage showing why that follow up was necessary. Portland police wrote a summons and released a statement designed to make that sound like enough.