Former Olympic volleyball player Kim Glass is recovering from injuries she said she suffered in an unprovoked attack by a homeless man in downtown Los Angeles.
Glass, who won a silver medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics on Team USA’s indoor volleyball team, described the attack in a video she posted on her Instagram Stories. She had a black eye that was swollen shut and a gash on the side of her nose.
Glass said she was outside with a friend when a man with “hateful eyes” suddenly attacked her.
“As I was leaving lunch, I was outside saying goodbye to a friend and this homeless man ran up,” she said. “He had something in his hand, he was on the side of the car in the street, and he just like looked at me with some pretty hateful eyes, and as I go to tell my friend I think something is wrong with him, before I knew it, a big metal bolt like pipe hit me. It happened so fast, he literally flung it from the street.”
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Glass said she suffered multiple fractures around her eye and needed stitches.
“Guys, just be safe out there… I wasn’t ready for it and there’s a lot of mentally ill people on these streets right now,” she said in the video.
Bystanders rushed to help and restrained the man until Los Angeles police officers arrived.
LAPD spokeswoman, Officer Rosario Cervantes, told Urban Hollywood 411 the attack happened at Olive and Eighth streets on Friday around 2:40 p.m. The alleged attacker, 51-year-old Semeon Tesfamariam, was booked on suspicion of felony assault with a deadly weapon.
Los Angeles has a growing homeless problem. In the official 2020 homeless count, there were 41,290 unhoused people living on the streets of the city, and violence involving the homeless frequently makes headlines.
A homeless man was charged with the murder of local nurse Sandra Shells, who was attacked on Jan. 13, as she waited at a bus stop in downtown L.A. The suspect punched Shells so hard that she fell to the ground and fractured her skull. Police said the attack was unprovoked.
Also in January of this year, a homeless man killed 24-year-old Brianna Kupfer while she worked alone in a furniture store on La Brea Avenue near Hollywood. The man randomly entered the store and stabbed Kupfer before fleeing. The suspect was later arrested and charged with one count of murder and “a special allegation that he used a deadly and dangerous weapon, a knife,” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said.
Watch Kim Glass discuss her attack in the video below.
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