Galanter, Aides Confer Amid Signs She’ll Stay in Race : Groggy Victim Can’t Answer Police Queries

Los Angeles City Council candidate Ruth Galanter, recovering from a vicious stabbing attack in her Venice home, was visited by police detectives in her hospital room Thursday evening but she was unable to answer their questions about the assault.

“She was groggy and under medication and it was hard for her to speak,” said Police Lt. Ed Henderson, who is heading the investigation.

Detectives will try again Saturday to interview Galanter at the UCLA Medical Center, providing she continues to improve. “We have to wait and see how she is progressing,” he said.

Fingerprints Found

As the investigation continued, fingerprints found inside Galanter’s home were being run through the Police Department’s identification system against a pool of fingerprints of 600,000 known criminals, police said.

By late Thursday, no definite matches had been made, Henderson said, adding that police could not be sure whether the prints found were left by the attacker.

Police believe Galanter was attacked by an intruder who crept into her one-story stucco home through a window in a back porch door in the pre-dawn hours Wednesday. Galanter was stabbed twice with a knife before her screams, and a bedside burglar alarm she managed to set off apparently sent the assailant fleeing. The wounds were two to three inches deep, doctors said. One severed a carotid artery that carries blood to the brain; the other punctured her pharynx, part of the food tube near the esophagus.

Henderson said no weapon has been recovered.

The attack came less than a month before Galanter, 46, an urban planning consultant, was to face City Council President Pat Russell in a showdown for the 6th District seat that Russell has held for 17 years.

Hospital officials, in brief comments Thursday, said Galanter was in serious condition--improved from critical condition, her status after five hours of emergency surgery Wednesday. She was being treated in the intensive-care unit and was under police guard, officials said.

“She is resting comfortably and continues to improve,” said hospital spokeswoman Laura Butler, who described Galanter as “aware, alert and coherent.”

Neurological Function

On Thursday morning, Galanter associate Marshall Grossman said, doctors were assessing Galanter’s neurological function through a series of tests. By afternoon, doctors had removed a respiratory tube in her throat and she was visited briefly by family members and some campaign staffers.

The police investigation, meanwhile, continued to revolve around three potential motives--that the attack was the random act of an intruder, that Galanter was targeted for assault by a rapist or that the incident was politically motivated.

“We really don’t have enough information to claim exactly what it is,” Henderson said. “The political or a rapist or just a surprised burglar.”

A law enforcement source said Thursday that at least one fingerprint found at Galanter’s house has been linked to a suspect in the attack, but Henderson denied that any such match had been made.

“Several fingerprints were lifted at the scene, and they’re being processed,” he said.

The LAPD’s $6-million automatic fingerprint identification system, which went into limited use in January and is due to be running at full strength next month, is being used to process the prints, Henderson said.

The system is similar to the CAL-ID statewide system, which contains a computer log of the state Justice Department’s criminal fingerprints. That system won praise more than a year ago when it matched a fingerprint found at an alleged “Night Stalker” crime scene to Richard Ramirez, who is awaiting trial in a series of brutal rapes and killings.

Earlier Burglary Attempt

Henderson said police were also unable to ascertain whether the Wednesday morning assault was tied to an apparent attempted burglary at the Galanter home Monday, when someone slit a screen on the back porch window and attempted without success to break into the house. Galanter’s attacker gained access through the same window, police said.

Detectives were also sifting through files on other assaults and robberies, hoping to find a clue to the Galanter case. Police were specifically looking at two residential rapes that occurred in the Venice area in March and April and at an assortment of other intruder cases.

“We don’t know if they’re connected or not,” Henderson said. “We’re looking at all of them.”

Police said no recent crimes in the Venice area were as vicious as the attack on Galanter.

“The extent of the violence that occurred here--the ones that I have don’t fit that pattern,” Pacific Division Lt. Gabe Ornelas said.

Another recent victim of an attack, Secretary of State March Fong Eu, on Thursday offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Galanter’s assailant.

The money came from a Crime Fighters Fund set up with donations Eu received following a beating at the hands of a robber who entered her home Nov. 10.

‘The Trauma One Suffers’

“Having been through a similar experience recently myself, I know only too well the trauma one suffers knowing the assailant is still at large,” Eu said in a statement released by her office. A 27-year-old prison parolee has been arrested and charged with attacking Eu.

Most of Galanter’s neighbors said they neither heard nor saw anything unusual in the hours before the intrusion, which took place on a quiet street in the eastern section of Venice. Complaints about crime in the area led neighbors to form a Neighborhood Watch group recently; Galanter was among the organizers.

One neighbor said petty crimes are not unusual.

“I chased a man out who was sleeping in my bushes about five nights ago,” said one man, whose house is across an alley from Galanter’s. “He looked like a drunk, like his brain would be too wet to do something like this (attack).”

He said that three gangs roam the neighborhood and that one painted a threatening slogan on Galanter’s garage several weeks ago but “she didn’t do nothing about it but paint it out.”

Another neighbor, Mike Mitchell, said he was alerted to the attack by the ringing of the bedside police alarm Galanter was able to activate. By the time he ran down the street to her house, police were arriving, he said.

Galanter had spent the hours before the attack in pursuit of votes for the upcoming election.

Her voice hoarse from speech-making, she appeared Tuesday night at a small fund-raiser in a private home in Venice and returned to her home before 11 p.m. Campaign press secretary Jim Bickhart said they talked on the phone after her arrival and Galanter asked him for some materials. He brought them to her house and stayed until 11:30 p.m.

Five hours later, Galanter’s neighbors awakened to the sound of her screams and the bleating of her police alarm.

Times staff writers Frank Clifford, George R. Fry, Richard Simon and Lois Timnick contributed to this article.