Late this January, Mr. Price met Shelby Alexandra Hayne, an artist with whom he first messaged in 2019 on Instagram.
“I greatly admire your adventurous spirit!” he wrote to her. “And you’re super hot LOLzzz.” They exchanged messages. Ms. Hayne, then 24, shared that she had recently graduated from college. He shared a clip of himself on Fox Business, saying, “Here’s my morning so far.”
Mr. Price proposed times to meet, but Ms. Hayne brushed him off. A few months later, he tried again.
People she admired regularly reposted items from Mr. Price, and when she ran across Mr. Forbes’s blog, she wondered, “Is this just some person with a vendetta?”
She said she hoped that Mr. Price could provide advice and connections to integrate activism into her art. She and her boyfriend decided it was worth meeting him, even if he might expect a date.
“You’re doing the most impressive things,” Ms. Hayne wrote Mr. Price in December.
In January, they had dinner at a restaurant in Seattle’s Capitol Hill, where she said they discussed politics. What happened next was detailed in interviews, a police report and text messages.
As the restaurant closed, her Uber app wasn’t working, and Mr. Price suggested they stay warm in his Tesla as she downloaded it again.
Sitting in the front seats, he tried to kiss her and grabbed her throat, she told the police.
“He did not let go of my throat right away,” she recalled.
“After I rejected him,” she said, “he transformed.”
Ms. Hayne called her boyfriend, pretending he was her brother, and asked him to rush and get her. Mr. Price sped north, driving her to a Park N Ride.