Donations help shooting victim avoid eviction

Los Angeles County residents saved a shooting victim from eviction this week.

Rashaun Williams, 29, a home health aide and crossing guard, has been out of work since she was shot in both legs July 11 on Imperial Highway in South Los Angeles, caught in gang crossfire while visiting relatives.

“It changed my life. It just changed everything completely,” the single mother said. “I haven’t been able to provide for my daughter like I want to.”

The Times reported Williams’ story in August. She had moved to Lancaster from Torrance the week before the shooting, and her apartment was still mostly unfurnished. After several surgeries to remove bullets from her legs, she was left bedridden.

After the story ran, Williams received numerous donations, including furniture. Crime victims’ assistance provided her with a bed, some toys for her 6-year-old daughter, Ky’mariy Redd, $95 in gift certificates and a $300 check. She had Medi-Cal health insurance but was placed on a waiting list for physical therapy.

Williams said she has been teaching herself to walk again with crutches, but lately her right leg has been swelling. After the shooting, surgeons replaced the shattered bone with a metal pin. A doctor recently told her she may need more surgery.

She did not qualify for unemployment assistance because she could not seek work, yet, she said, her application for federal disability assistance was denied on the grounds that she was still young and healthy enough to work.

“I haven’t had any physical therapy, so how do you expect me to go out and work?” she said. “No one is going to hire me like this.”

She and Ky’mariy lived on $328 in monthly CalWorks welfare payments and $274 in food stamps. Ky’mariy’s father, a truck driver helped with the bills.

Then, last month, he had a heart attack and was hospitalized, Williams said. She could no longer afford the $865 rent on her two-bedroom apartment in the Granada Villas complex, where she had deliberately moved to escape violence.

Williams was due to be evicted Thursday night. She called The Times the day before to say she was worried that Ky’mariy would have to switch schools. She planned to move in with relatives, probably her mother, who lives in a tough section of Torrance where Williams said gang violence had recently surged.

“In my condition, that’s the last place I would want to be,” she said, but, “I really have no options.”

South Los Angeles community leaders responded by calling for donations and demanding that federal officials approve Williams’ application for disability assistance and speed her care.

“It really touched me that a woman who had been shot in both legs was not getting the help she needed,” said Eddie Jones, president of the Los Angeles Civil Rights Assn.

Cal State Northridge student Lauren Marcus gave $50. Lois Frankel, president of Pasadena-based Corporate Coaching International, gave $1,000. With their help, Williams was able to avoid eviction.

On Friday, she thanked donors during an radio appearance on Inglewood-based KTYM-AM (1460).

“I’m happy I’m getting help. I have to learn to put my pride aside,” Williams said.

She said she is planning to downsize to a one-bedroom apartment nearby that rents for $550. She is also hoping to find a job.

“I just can’t wait to get back to work,” she said, “so I can take care of myself.”

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com