Strangers Aid Survivors of Assault : Fund Will Help Mother, Daughter and 2 Orphaned Children

When Marvin Feldman heard the radio news report, he says, he felt “like someone had hit me in the stomach.”

A man had broken into a home near Hollywood Park race track in Inglewood, raped two women and a girl, then shot each several times as they lay bound on the floor. A 19-year-old victim died, but her 32-year-old housemate and the older woman’s daughter, 14, survived.

Didn’t Know Victims

Feldman, a Van Nuys public relations consultant, did not know any of the victims, but he had a chance meeting with a friend of the murdered woman a few days after the June 3 attack and decided: “Let’s do something.”

The result was the formation of a group called Help Each Life Please, which has collected $4,500 in donations from 72 benefactors for the mother and daughter and for the dead woman’s two orphaned children.

HELP has also recruited a doctor, Santa Monica ophthalmologist Marshall J. Keyes, who said he will donate his services to help the teen-ager, who lost an eye in the attack.

The mother, who is living with her four children at a friend’s house in South-Central Los Angeles, said she cannot understand why they were attacked.

A suspect, J. C. Metoyer, was arrested in the Crenshaw District a week after the attack. The 19-year-old reputed gang member is scheduled to face a preliminary hearing July 28 in Los Angeles Municipal Court on 11 felony charges, including murder.

The mother said she had seen Metoyer near her home but knew him only as the grandson of a neighbor.

“Every now and then I just sit and think, ‘Why?’ ” the mother said in a telephone interview. “I think, “Why me and why my daughter?’ ”

The woman said she still has a bullet lodged behind her right ear because doctors say it would be too risky to remove it. But she said she is regaining her strength, despite pain and ringing in her ears.

“I have some days I’m kind of down,” she said. “But some days I’m just myself.”

She has been cheered by the help of strangers. “There are so many things to do to get back on our feet, but with the help of Marvin and everybody, it’s going great. I didn’t know that so many people cared.”

She said her daughter is anxious to be rid of the patch that covers the eye she lost to a bullet. When the girl heard that a doctor had volunteered to fit her with a prosthetic eye, “She was so happy,” the mother said. “She said: ‘For real? Is he really going to help me?’ . . . She clapped her hands.”

Collecting Donations

The Wells Fargo Bank branch, 400 S. Market St. in Inglewood, is collecting donations for the survivors. Branch Manager Mary White said donations ranging from $2 to $2,000 have been mailed.

“Then I’ve had other people call and say that they don’t have any money to give, but they just feel so bad about what happened they want to talk about it,” White said. “They are very much interested in the child. They want to know how she is doing.”