Police Seek Leads in Beating of Blind Woman

Fabiola Fragoso said the bus-stop incident began innocently enough, with another woman offering a treat to her guide dog.

Fragoso, who has some vision but is legally blind, said she advised the woman that it was best not to distract the dog.

Moments later, she was on the ground in the Canoga Park street, having been knocked down, kicked and burned with coffee.

“I tried to walk away, but she grabbed me,” recalled Fragoso, 25, of Woodland Hills. “She got me.”

Los Angeles police say they are searching for leads in the assault last Friday. But it is a difficult case because they have yet to find witnesses other than Fragoso.

“It sounds like one of our crazy people,” Lt. Lee Lorenz said.

Fragoso had a similar assessment: “Either she was on drugs or she was a psychotic person.”

Fragoso said she was sitting on a bench at Sherman Way and Topanga Canyon Boulevard waiting for a bus to take her to a friend’s home in Van Nuys. She saw a blurry image of a woman 25 to 30 years old holding a doughnut to the mouth of her Labrador retriever, Chessie.

She took the doughnut from the dog, she said, then asked the woman not to feed the animal.

The woman shrieked, “You’re not gonna tell me what I can and cannot do,” Fragoso said, then threw hot coffee on her neck, struck her with a portable stereo and began kicking her and the dog.

Soon after, a man stopped his car and the woman backed off, Fragoso said. The man offered to wait for police, she said, but the bus pulled up and she decided to get on. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said.

Fragoso reported the incident to police about 10 hours later from her home.

Days later, she still has bad bruises on her leg and a grapefruit-sized abrasion on her neck.

She said she would like to see something done about “people who shouldn’t be on the streets,” and worries that such an incident could have been worse.

“Last Friday it was me, but what if it was some woman with her baby?”