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Crime & Safety

LAPD Arrests Suspect in Attack on Eagle Rock Jogger

Police, looking for three other suspects, describe the attack as "isloated" and not related to gangs. (Photo gallery and video)

The LAPD has arrested a suspect in the gruesome assault on an Eagle Rock resident who was jogging last night at the Yosemite Recreation Center and officers are actively pursuing leads about three other assailants in the crime that has shocked the community and spurred demands for greater security.

At a packed news conference held at the Northeast Community Police Station Thursday evening, LAPD Detective Supervisor Martha Ramos explained that her detectives are interrogating an 18-year-old suspect believed to be responsible for the attack on the 45-year-old resident who lives near Addison Way, adjacent to the Yosemite Rec Center.

The victim had been jogging at the Rec Center on the East side of the baseball field near while listening to music on his MP3 player when four or five male youths in their late teens or early 20s attacked him with skateboards and stole his MP3. Read Eagle Rock Patch's coverage of the aggravated robbery .

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Ramos, who has headed robbery investigations in Northeast Los Angeles for the past four years, explained that her detectives were interrogating the suspect following a tip from a witness to the crime. No other information about the suspect has been released so far in an effort to safeguard the investigation, Ramos said.

Ramos confirmed that the victim sustained "pretty bad injuries around the upper torso" and "very severe bruising." She called it a "violent" and "psychological" attack that was a "crime of opportunity.”

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LAPD Capt. David Lindsay told the news conference that the attack was an “isolated incident” unconnected to any gang activity, echoing the view of Senior Lead Officer Craig Orange, who is in charge of policing Eagle Rock, that the attack was the work of “juveniles who wanted to show how tough they are.”

During a survey of the scene of the crime earlier Thursday, Orange told Eagle Rock Patch that the attack appeared to be initiated by the suspect now in custody to “show his buddies, ‘watch how we take his MP3.’”

District 14 , who was also present at the news conference, said that patrols have been stepped up in and around the Yosemite Rec Center. The area is frequently targeted by graffiti taggers. A swimming pool at the south end of the rec center already has a video surveillance camera to deter taggers—and the installation of a long-sanctioned second camera is being expedited, Huizar said. Further, a city-funded initiative whereby a private company, Graffiti Busters, cleans up graffiti within 48 hours of receiving a complaint will be executed even more promptly, Huizar added.

Despite all those safety measures—not to mention the promises of more—and assurances that the Feb. 2 attack at the rec center was an isolated incident, policing in Eagle Rock has come under rapid-fire scrutiny. The local television affiliates of CBS and NBC, as well as KCAL, which were present at the news conference, aggressively questioned the LAPD’s claims, especially in light of the recent exodus of officers from LAPD gang units, following their refusal to comply with federal orders to disclose details of their personal finances by March 31.

Just yesterday, the Associated Press quoted an LAPD senior lead officer as saying that "more gang members are being seen walking around in public, crossing out each other's graffiti and going into each other's area a lot more." The officer, Bobby Hill, of the Northeast Division, added: "There's less pressure on them, they become more brazen."

Although violent crime in Eagle Rock has gone down 33 percent over the past year, according to LAPD figures, theft has gone up 12 percent, and many Eagle Rockers fear that there might be more to gang activity in the neighborhood than meets the eye, especially given the proximity of Highland Park and Glassell Park, where gangs are firmly entrenched.

President Michael Larsen, a neighbor of the assaulted jogger who assisted him following the attack and called 911, noted at the news conference that the Yosemite Rec Center is "literally filled with tags." Nonetheless, the police remained firm in their statement that the assault on the jogger as well as the rampant tagging in Yosemite Park are not gang-affiliated.

Senior Lead Officer Orange explained that such tagging is the work of a few individuals who are trying to make a name for themselves through their tagging, and are not members of a gang.

For his part, Councilmember Huizar called Eagle Rock the "safest community in Los Angeles." Relatively speaking, there’s some truth to that, but it's hard to imagine that the jogger who was bashed in the head with skateboards, solely for his possession of an MP3 player, would agree.

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