4 youths arrested in attacks on homeless
Four teenage boys were arrested for allegedly driving around Los Angeles and attacking homeless people while using a cellphone camera to capture some of the assaults, LAPD officials said Monday.
The youths allegedly attacked at least eight homeless people either by throwing smoke bombs or firing plastic pellets from an air pistol at them and in one case throwing a bike into a homeless person’s tent as he slept.
Police said the suspects filmed some of the attacks with a cellphone camera, and the attackers intended to post the recordings on the Internet.
“That’s not going to happen now,” said LAPD Lt. Paul Vernon.
One of the smoke bombs caused a homeless man’s blanket to catch fire early Sunday, leading to the arrest of three of the four teenage suspects shortly afterward. A fourth boy was taken into custody Monday while at summer school.
All four teenagers have been booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and could face arson charges, Vernon said.
The incidents sparked outrage on skid row and beyond, with some advocates saying it was just the latest of several high-profile attacks on homeless people.
“There is a vulnerability to being out on the street. It’s just a terrible situation,” said Rebecca Isaacs, executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
The youths, ages 15 to 17, are all from Los Angeles and have no prior criminal records, Vernon said. Cellphones with recordings of previous assaults have been confiscated and the teenagers’ parents have been cooperating with authorities, police said.
Detectives believe that other homeless people were attacked and are asking the public to provide information about other possible incidents, Vernon said.
The attacks occurred between July 3 and July 15, although police said the dates, which were taken from the cellphones, could be wrong.
The first attack happened July 3 near Melrose Avenue and Vine Street in Hollywood, where, police said, the youths used an air pistol to shoot a man whose head was covered with a blanket.
Then on July 4 in Hollywood, police said, the teenage boys threw a homeless man’s bicycle into his tent.
Evidence linking the foursome to four smoke bomb attacks against homeless men in the early hours of July 15 in downtown L.A. has been collected, police said.
The victims include a sleeping homeless man on San Pedro Street near Washington Boulevard; a group of several homeless men at Olympic Boulevard and Santee Street; a homeless man on Olympic, east of Broadway; and a homeless man whose blanket caught on fire after a smoke bomb was thrown at him in the 1000 block of South Broadway.
Two years ago, the Los Angeles Police Department arrested two 19-year-old men for driving around downtown L.A. in the early hours of Aug. 16 and hitting homeless people with baseball bats.
One of the victims, Ernest Adams, 57, was in a coma for three weeks and sustained permanent scars and vision loss in one eye.
Justin Edward Brumfield of Inglewood was convicted of assault and is serving an 11-year prison sentence. His accomplice, William Alexander Orantes, received a three-year prison sentence after pleading no contest to assault charges.
Andy Bales, chief executive of the Union Rescue Mission in downtown L.A., said the attacks were part of a “long, long unfortunate tradition.”
“Homeless people have enough ugliness in society to face with the normal everyday, let alone with having kids beat up on them,” Bales said.
A 2006 study by the National Coalition for the Homeless recorded 142 attacks last year against homeless people, 20 of which resulted in death -- a 65% increase from 2005, when 86 homeless people were violently assaulted, including 13 homicides, the advocacy group said.
cara.dimassa@latimes.com
