Attacker Dangles Woman From Overpass

A Los Angeles woman out for a Sunday morning stroll was attacked by a man who grabbed her and dangled her briefly from a Harbor Freeway overpass, threatening to drop her into the traffic lanes below, authorities said.

The incident, described by Los Angeles police as unprovoked, ended when a cab driver stopped and intervened.

The assailant left the woman, Lilla Joy, on the Wilshire Boulevard overpass and ran. But moments later police arrested a suspect, identified as Jerome Ward, 30, a transient, for investigation of attempted murder.

The motive for the attack is a mystery, Officer Jerry Wyatt said.

“She was just walking down the street,” Wyatt said. “She was accosted by this guy and he attempted to throw her over the guardrail. That’s it.”

Joy, 61, said she had planned to step out for a brief walk before watching a 9 a.m. basketball game. She said she was virtually alone when she reached the overpass, where a man--who was wearing a blue dress--was sitting on the curb. She said she had second thoughts about proceeding across, but did so anyway.

“I’d just thought I’d take a short walk and get some fresh air so I could come back and watch the ball game,” she said. “I was just about to turn back. It was about 10 minutes till 9.”

The man on the curb suddenly “jumped up and grabbed me,” she said. “He just dashed at me, screaming obscenities. He was just raving--raving and swearing. At first he knocked me down, then he picked me up.

“I thought I was going to go over.”

The attacker, Joy said, was stocky, much stronger than the 5-foot-2 woman.

Joy said he held her over the guardrail for a moment, forcing her to look down while she desperately tried to cling to the top rail.

“He (the assailant) said, ‘Look down,’ ” as he dangled her over the side of the overpass, Joy recalled. “ ‘That’s where you’re going to go.’ ”

Joy said she felt “stunned, that’s all,” until she saw the attacker look away, apparently at the arrival of the cab driver.

“Then he turned his head . . . and he dropped me back down on the sidewalk,” Joy said.

The dark-haired cab driver, whose name she could not remember, picked up something from in or near his cab that looked like a small club, she said.

He confronted the assailant, who ran. Police arrived within three or four minutes and made the arrest, she said.

Police did not immediately release the cab driver’s name.

“I don’t know why he did it,” Joy said of the attacker. “It was just like he wanted to hit out at something. I don’t think it was personal.”

‘I don’t know why he did it. It was just like he wanted to hit out at something. I don’t think it was personal.’