Crime & Safety

UPDATE: LAPD Steps up Patrols After Brutal Assault on Eagle Rock Jogger

Detectives are investigating the attack by apparent gang members at the Yosemite Rec Center.

Detectives are investigating the vicious assault on an Eagle Rock resident by a group of young men while he was jogging at the Yosemite Recreation Center last night, and the LAPD has stepped patrols in the area, which is near .

“We currently have Northeast Detectives working on the investigation and we have increased extra patrol around and within the park,” Senior Lead Officer Craig Orange told Eagle Rock Patch, referring to Yosemite Park, a largely desolate area south of the recreation center known to be frequented by vandals and graffiti taggers.

The unprovoked attack has shocked the Eagle Rock community. The , whose president, Michael Larsen, is a neighbor of the assaulted jogger, is looking at ways to respond to the attack. Larsen called 911 and tended to the victim’s wounds after he stumbled on his doorstep last night.

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At about 9:30 p.m., said Larsen, he heard someone moaning and crying outside his house, which is adjacent to the “Rec Center,” as the Yosemite Recreation Center is popularly called. “First I wanted to make sure who it was,” said Larsen, “and then I saw it was our neighbor. He was bleeding and dazed and his fingers were broken.”

Larsen said his neighbor, who is in his mid-40s and lives near Addison Way, had gone to his own home first but found no one there.

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He had been running at the Rec Center on the East side of the baseball field near Eagle Rock High, Larsen’s neighbor told him, when four or five male youths in their late teens or early 20s attacked him with skateboards and stole his cell phone. He had been jogging while listening to music on his cell phone, which has an in-built personal music device.

Larsen said the attack, which occurred around 9:15 p.m., left his neighbor with severe lacerations to his head, a broken hand and possibly broken ribs. “He was literally going into shock and was very confused,” said Larsen, adding: “He was probably knocked out at some point and had symptoms of somebody who had a severe head injury. He kept saying, ‘are my kids okay’ and ‘my fingers are broken.’”

Paramedics arrived within two to three minutes and three LAPD police officers in two patrol cars arrived within 10 minutes. Larsen said his neighbor was rushed to ER at a hospital in Glendale.

The assailants appeared to be gang members. “It’s extremely common that hoodlum-type youth hang out at the Rec Center, but this kind of assault has never happened," said Larsen. "I think it was outsiders and probably gang-related—these were not kids smoking pot or making out but kids out to rob somebody. It shakes up your whole world.”

The lack of security around the Yosemite Rec Center is palpable at the best of times. "I’ve been railing against it for years, but there’s such a lack of resources and will,” said Larsen, who was the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council’s public safety director before being elected president last year.

Besides routine patrols in the area that the LAPD’s Senior Lead Officer Craig Orange conducts when he’s on duty—he wasn’t on duty last night—a 24-hour surveillance camera installed on the deck of a swimming pool monitors the area toward the far south of the Rec Center. Given the camera’s location, it’s unlikely to have captured last night’s assault, which took place in a field that is partially flood-lit at times during the night but which still has some dark areas. The ERNC has got approval for another camera to be installed in the amphitheater further south of the swimming pool, where hoodlum-type youth are known to hang out and where graffiti is rife.

Although Eagle Rock is not known to have an endemic gang problem, there has been a spike in gang-related graffiti in the neighborhood recently. In fact, the issue was raised just on Tuesday night at the monthly board meeting of the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council, held at the Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock. Red-lettered graffiti, about five feet high and with distinct gang symbols, is scrawled on a wall along Eagle Rock Boulevard, across from the , located on the southeast corner of Yosemite Avenue, ERNC board member Peter Hilton informed the meeting. Both the Yosemite Rec Center and Eagle Rock High School are located on Yosemite Avenue, less than a mile from the scene of the graffiti.

Last month, shortly after New Year's Day, officers in the LAPD Northeast Division began defecting from the gang unit and opting for patrol duty as the countdown began for a March 31 deadline to comply with a federal anti-corruption regulation to reveal details about their personal finances, including those of their spouses. Of a little more than 20 officers in the unit, about half had left as of mid-Jaunary and the remaining were expected to leave in subsequent days, according to Rick Ortiz, chief detective and supervisor of the gang unit.

“The most disturbing thing is that the Rec Center is a place where hundreds of kids hang out and I’ve often pointed out that it’s a hub for gang-related illicit behavior,” said Larsen. “It’s a shame that we don’t have more security in the area.”


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