LAPD looking for man who beat 80-year-old woman
Los Angeles police are looking for a man they say forced his way inside an 80-year-old woman’s Hollywood apartment and beat her, leaving her in critical condition.
The attack happened about 4 a.m. Saturday, at a retirement complex near Hollywood Boulevard and Ivar Avenue, police said. The man repeatedly hit the buzzer at the entrance of the secured complex, police said, until an unknown person let him inside.
Surveillance footage, released Wednesday by the LAPD, showed the man taking an elevator to one of the building’s upper floors. He then knocked on the door of an apartment where the 80-year-old woman lived alone, police said.
The woman answered the door and the man pushed his way inside, said Deputy Chief Matt Blake, who heads the LAPD’s detective bureau. The man attempted to sexually assault the woman, Blake said, but she fought back, prompting the man to become “very, very aggressive.”
The man “significantly beat her up,” Blake said.
Eventually the woman was able to ward off her attacker and the man ran off, said LAPD Capt. Billy Hayes. She left her apartment and sought help from a neighbor, who called police, Hayes said.
The woman was critically injured and remains hospitalized, police said.
From the information detectives have gathered so far, Hayes said, there were no signs that the victim knew her attacker.
“This appears, on its face, to be random,” he said.
Investigators believe the man is between 25 and 30 years old, about 6 feet tall and 220 pounds. At the time of the attack, they said, he was wearing black baggy jeans, black shoes and a black hooded sweatshirt with the words “Penn State” across the chest.
LAPD officials released video from the building’s security cameras Wednesday, asking anyone with information about the man or the attack to call police at (213) 486-6910.
“We need your help,” Blake said.
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