Southeast : 2 Women Beaten by Neighbors, Police Say

The bloody handprint is still on the sidewalk in front of the home where the two women live on Temple Avenue in Long Beach.

There is a bloody footprint there as well, a grim reminder to passersby of what happened in the early hours of Saturday when the two were allegedly beaten by a dozen of their neighbors with sticks that resembled police batons.

Their transgression, according to those who live nearby, is that they parked a little too close to some neighbors--and that they were lesbians.

The details of what happened are sketchy and the Long Beach Police Department report was still unavailable late Monday afternoon. But what those in the neighborhood say is that the two women exchanged words with neighbors, possibly over where a car was parked, and that the bloody incident ensued from there.

The initial police report was terse and apparently erroneous: that two women were beaten with a baseball bat by just two other women.

But residents said the beatings were much worse because a large number of people were involved.

The incident occurred about 12:25 a.m. when 10 to 12 people from the next block attacked the women after an argument.

Long Beach Police spokeswoman Maria Mendez said that during the attack derogatory remarks were made about the sexual orientation of the two women.

“There were words exchanged to indicate that it was a hate crime,” she said.

When police arrived, all who were in the area of the beatings scattered. No arrests have been made. The two women were both badly beaten. One suffered a black eye and the other was treated at St. Mary’s Hospital for cuts to the scalp. She was treated and released.

The 15-year-old son of one of the beaten women said that his mother received 11 stitches in the head and that the other woman needed seven stitches for similar wounds.

“I don’t know where they came from, but they just swarmed,” he said.

Sharon Johnson, an advocate for the Los Angeles Gay Center anti-violence project, said the Saturday morning incident was similar to other attacks on gays and lesbians.

“It fits the general pattern,” she said.