2 Sex Attacks at Placentia Parks Raise Local Fears

Children still skate, bicycle and play catch at Tuffree Hill Park--but watchful adults are never far away.

A layer of uneasiness has blanketed the once-popular neighborhood park in the week since a 13-year-old girl was raped in a restroom New Year’s Day. On Thursday, Placentia police released a sketch of the young man suspected in the attack.

“I don’t come around here at night since that happened,” 14-year-old Edwin Dickason said, preparing to pedal home just after sunset on a recent evening. “It kind of hurt me because it’s kind of messed up, what he did. It’s sad. Sometimes I come home late and my parents worry, and I know why.”

The attack was part of a violent beginning to 1998 in Placentia. Police officers shot and killed a man they say was brandishing a gun just before midnight New Year’s Day. That afternoon, in what police say was a love triangle, a man stabbed to death his romantic rival and critically wounded the man’s wife.

And on Jan. 2, in a case unrelated to the Tuffree Hill Park rape, a man tried to sexually assault a woman at another park in the city and cut her 13 times before the woman’s dog scared him off, detectives said.

This in a city that had only two rapes reported in all of 1997.

The victim at Tuffree park was in-line skating with her sister and cousin about 5:30 p.m. Jan. 1, but she left them behind to use the restroom near the John O. Tynes Recreation Center, Placentia police spokeswoman Corinne Loomis said.

When the girl went inside, she made eye contact with a man sitting on the grass nearby, Loomis said. He blocked her path when she came back outside.

He held out an expired ticket for a concert at the Galaxy Theater, and when the girl moved forward to read it, he clasped a hand over her mouth and pushed her inside the bathroom, where he raped her, Loomis said.

“She was just a sitting duck on those roller-blades,” Loomis said, adding that the girl was more vulnerable because it was after dark. “She couldn’t have had much more going against her.”

The girl’s sister and cousin saw the man push her into the bathroom, and they ran to their nearby home to get help, Loomis said. They returned with the girl’s mother, who scared off the attacker when she shouted for her daughter, Loomis said.

The man had a makeshift knife fashioned from gold-colored sheet metal that he pressed into the girl’s back, Loomis said.

“There’s not a place anymore that’s safe,” Simone Andreeff, 75, said as she scuttled past the scene of the attack while walking her Shih Tzu, Alex. “This used to be a paradise, but all over, we have problems. It’s a shame.”

The park usually is bustling, even at night, with children and families from Placentia and neighboring cities using the ball fields, tennis courts, gym or simply walking around the lake at adjacent Tri City Park. But the park was nearly deserted New Year’s Day, Loomis said.

And regulars say some of the people showing up at the park have stirred fears of dark pathways and the solitude that residents once sought there.

“I see a lot of low-life characters coming through here, a lot of single guys,” said Robert Maylum, who has taught for 30 years at Tuffree Middle School next to the park.

He said last week’s attack brought back a painful memory--the rape and murder of 14-year-old Wendy Osborn, who disappeared Jan. 20, 1987, while walking to the school. Her body was found two days later in Chino Hills. An arrest was finally made in 1995.

The rapist in the attack on the girl is described as Latino, with a thick Spanish accent, 15 to 20 years old, about 5-foot-4 and 125 pounds, unshaven, with black hair that was close-cropped on the sides and back but long and slicked-back on top, Loomis said.

“He can go shave his head tomorrow, but someone’s going to remember somebody with that distinctive hairstyle,” she said.

He was last seen wearing a white T-shirt, a dark blue or black sweatshirt, light blue jeans and black, pointed boots, she said.

In the assault the following day, a 49-year-old Fullerton woman was exercising six dogs at Kraemer Memorial Park, Loomis said. About 9:30 p.m., a man walked up and grabbed her arms, then tried to pull down her pants, Loomis said.

She kicked, punched and hit the man, Loomis said. The dogs were running loose, but one barked at and jumped on the man, scaring him off, Loomis said.

During the attack, he cut the woman repeatedly, including once on the face and once on the eyelid, Loomis said. Police do not know whether the man used a knife or some other weapon. The cuts were superficial, and the woman was treated and released from Placentia Linda Community Hospital.

The man is described as Latino, 33 or 34 years old, 5 feet, 6 inches tall, about 130 to 150 pounds, muscular, with straight black hair that is long in the back, clean-shaven with a dark complexion and almond-shaped eyes, police said.

Anyone with information about either attack is asked to call Loomis at the Placentia Police Department: (714) 993-8164.