Girl, 12, Is Assaulted at Park

Los Angeles police on Friday were searching for a man who sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl at gunpoint in a restroom at a public park, authorities said.

The attack occurred at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Valley Plaza Park in the 12200 block of Archwood Street, said Capt. Greg Meyer of the LAPD’s North Hollywood Division.

“This was truly a vicious crime and we want this person caught,” Meyer said at an afternoon news conference at the station. “Even though crime is down in this city, in this division and in most large cities, there still are some vicious, violent criminals . . . out there in society.”

Meyer said the girl was walking along a sidewalk adjacent to the Valley Plaza Recreation Center building when a man displayed a handgun, threatened her and forced her into a men’s room, where he assaulted her.

After the attack, Meyer said, the assailant ran away and the girl went into the building to find her mother, who immediately called police. The girl was taken to a local hospital for medical treatment and to be interviewed by a rape counselor.

Police searched the area for the man, described as a 25- to 35-year-old African American, 5-feet-10, weighing 180 to 190 pounds. The man, who has a shaved head, was wearing a three-quarter-length black leather jacket, black dress pants and black shoes with laces.

North Hollywood detectives, crisis counselors and City Councilman Joel Wachs, who represents the area, will hold a community awareness meeting Sunday to update residents on the investigation. The meeting will begin at 2 p.m. at Emmanuel Lutheran Church, 6020 Radford St., North Hollywood.

Investigators have “pulled out all the stops” to find the assailant, Meyer said, including stepped up patrols of the area by uniformed and undercover officers from North Hollywood Division, Robbery Homicide Division’s Rape Special Section and city park rangers.

Additional law enforcement officers were called in, Meyer said, because the crime was so heinous. He said sexual assaults have been rare in city parks and that there have been no violent crimes at Valley Plaza Park in recent years.

Meanwhile, Valley Plaza Park officials called the attack “outrageous” and “sick.”

“Everyone here is outraged,” said Joe Medaglia, senior recreation director at Valley Plaza. “Everyone here is a parent. We all want what’s best for the kids.”

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Apart from vandalism and graffiti, Medaglia said, there have been no violent crimes in his five years as director.

“This is not normal; this is an aberration,” he said. “This is the kind of thing we read about happening in other neighborhoods. There is a sense of rage. We are all going to keep a closer look and not let our kids out of our sight.”

David Mills, a park employee, said the attack is a black eye for the recreation center that tries to support families and build communities through its basketball, softball, karate and day camp programs and by opening its meeting rooms to community groups such as Narcotics Anonymous and the Optimist Club.

“You have an incident like this and it takes a long time to get the tarnish off because someone did something stupid,” he said. “This was totally uncalled for; it’s pathetic.”

Gina Treadway, a homemaker whose three sons play in the park’s youth basketball league, said she will no longer let them make the short walk from her house to the park alone.

“That could have been my child,” she said. “Most people who come to this park live around here. How do we know he doesn’t live around here or that it won’t happen again tonight?”