What Happened on Cedaredge Avenue Three Saturdays Ago: A Reader Calls on Patch

Every so often in Eagle Rock, all kinds of things happen that few see or hear about—and they don’t even make a blip on the Internet.

What happened on Cedaredge Avenue, off Hill Drive, on Saturday, April 28, at around 4 p.m. fits that category of incidents that would have gone entirely unreported were it not for the watchful—and curious—attitude of community folk who live nearby.

Patch received a frantic e-mail Tuesday afternoon from Cedaredge resident Sallie Gonzalez about a man who she said she saw just across from her house three Saturdays ago, down on the secluded street, with a swollen, bloody face, shattered eye socket and broken ribs.

“To me it looked like he was beaten by a baseball bat,” Ms. Gonzalez wrote, wondering if the incident might be connected to the “crowbar” assault that occurred on May 8 on Floristan Avenue.

Patch called Ms. Gonzalez, and she described how she ran out of her garage door on hearing “the sound,” not knowing exactly what to do—and at the same time wanting to know as much about what had just happened if she was about to call 911.

An ambulance rushed the victim away and the police arrived, and kept coming for several days to investigate the area, Ms. Gonzalez said, adding: “Police say it looks like he was beaten up.”

Nobody saw exactly what happened, Lt. Mike Menza at the Northeast Community Station told Patch, explaining that “we got a call of a man down.” Detectives went to the hospital to investigate—and then two units went to the scene of the incident.

“One witness said she heard tires screaming,” Menza said. “We canvassed the area to see if there was any fight or robbery.” A car that belonged to the victim was still there and nothing seemed to be taken from it. Turned out somebody else did see “a guy running away,” said Menza, adding that it all sounded like a hit and run case: The suspect supposedly got out of his vehicle to see what he had wrought and then fled the scene.

A doctor at the hospital scotched further speculation. “His injuries are consistent with being hit by a car,” he told the police, according to Menza.

“So far we don’t know what happened to him, but we’re investigating it as a possible hit and run,” Menza said of the incident, confirming this much: The victim was a retired man who did “freelance work for some sort of wireless, telegraph company.”