Blind Woman, Bloodied in Bus Scuffle, Ignored by All

A blind woman, bloodied, bruised and weeping after being hit in the face during a fracas on a crowded RTD bus, said Tuesday that she pushed her way off the bus and walked about 15 blocks in rush hour to her Hollywood home without anyone offering to help.

“I kept thinking, ‘Surely, someone will come and help . . .’,” said the woman, Millicent Collinsworth, 39, her face discolored and swollen from the Monday incident. “But nothing.”

Since the episode, she said, she has thought about Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death on a New York street in 1964 while 38 neighbors ignored her screams for help.

“I feel numb,” Collinsworth said Tuesday. “It makes the world seem so frightening. . . . It’s just sadness I feel--that things have got down to this level.”

Collinsworth, an actress who lost her sight in an accident eight years ago, said she was returning home from Westwood about 4 p.m. when the scuffle on the bus occurred. She was seated, with her guide dog nestled under her legs.

The bus grew more and more crowded, and standing passengers pushed, shoved and cursed as more people boarded at each stop.

At about Fairfax Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, about 15 blocks from her home, a man in the aisle “went berserk,” she said, screaming and flailing his arms. “He said, ‘I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve just got to breathe,’ ” Collinsworth recalled.

In the ensuing scramble, she was hit in the face by what she thought was a backpack and lost her dark glasses. Passengers stepped on her dog’s harness and the 2-year-old black Labrador retriever, named “Eeyore,” for a Winnie the Pooh character, began to choke.

When Collinsworth bent down to help the dog, she was hit on the side of the face by one of the man’s hands. “All I could think was, I’m going to be trampled to death with my poor dog,” she said.

The driver stopped the bus, the man got off and she called to other passengers to let her off too. “I had to fight my way out,” she said. “Nobody helped.”

Bleeding from the nose and mouth, but mistaking the blood for her tears, Collinsworth and her dog struggled out the front exit of the bus, the driver apparently unaware that she was injured. Eeyore led her home along Sunset Boulevard. She said she did not hear other pedestrians but felt that the auto traffic was thick along the street.

“Perhaps people didn’t notice or felt they didn’t want to get involved,” she said.

Hands Slick With Blood

Only when she reached her apartment building and got out her keys did she realize that she was seriously hurt; her hands were slick with blood.

She telephoned a friend for help and he advised her to get a neighbor to determine how badly she was injured.

Meanwhile, a neighbor had spotted blood on her door and was about to knock to see if there was trouble, when she opened the door.

“It was a shock to see what she looked like,” said the neighbor, Dan Schwab, 38. “She was so covered with blood, it was unbelievable.”

Schwab tried to clean her up. Then Collinsworth’s friend arrived and called paramedics and police. She received stitches in her mouth at UCLA Medical Center and was then released.

An RTD spokesman said the bus driver did not file a report on the incident and may have been unaware that it occurred. Schwab, Collinsworth’s neighbor, incensed that no one had helped her, called The Times to report the incident.

No One Helped Her

“What upset me so much was that she got off the bus and nobody stopped to help her,” Schwab said. “Nobody took care of her.”

Los Angeles police said the incident is under investigation and asked anyone with information to call the Hollywood Division.

In in interview in the Westwood apartment of her friend, where she stayed Monday night, Collinsworth said the police were kind to her but told her that there was very little they could do. They advised her to contact a victims’ assistance group.

Collinsworth said Monday’s incident was the third time in a year she has been a victim of violence. A year ago, a man tried to rape her near a Braille school in downtown Los Angeles, she said. More recently, a man pushed her against the wall as she walked home from the store and snatched her groceries.

“The blind are the most vulnerable of handicapped people because we cannot identify our assailants,” she said. “We are sitting ducks.”

Blinded by Hammer Blow

Collinsworth lost her sight after a hammer fell on her head as she walked under a construction site in Irvine in June, 1979. She has lived on money she received as a settlement. She recently joined a group of handicapped performers and began going out on interviews for acting jobs.

She said the doctor who treated her Monday night advised her to get back on a bus as soon as possible to get over her fears.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” she said.

Times staff writers Roxane Arnold and Boris Yaro contributed to this story.