Trip Report: Scary Transient Fight

[jgorham]

So yesterday me and a few friends decided to walk down to Westwood to get coffee and catch up. For those of you who don't know, Westwood is a part of Los Angeles where UCLA's campus is located. As we are walking on one of the streets I see a dirty looking wheelchair sitting unoccupied on the curb, with around $200 in $20 bills sitting underneath it.

Before I can get too confused about this, I hear yelling coming from inside of Jerry's Famous Deli immediately to my left. I hear a lot of swearing and death threats, and then the door opens. Inside there are two homeless men, one tall and black, the other dirty and with a soft cast on his leg. I assume he is the one with the chair.

Besides yelling, the black guy was standing above the other man, strangling him and slamming his head into the ground. The door had opened because 2 guys on the waitstaff were trying to wrestle the two apart, and pull both of them outside. At this point I take out my cellphone to call the police.

As they rip the black guy off and pull him outside, he proceeds to throw a punch at one of the waiters. The waiters lost some of thier zeal at this point and decided to just back off. The black guy then proceeds to rip the cast off of the other dudes leg, and beat him with it. At this point I am finishing up my phone call, having just given the police the address of the Deli. Though still really confused, my next plan of attack was just to tell them that I called the police so they should stop fighting so as not to get arrested.

At this point the man who until recently had a cast on his leg is sorta whimpering on the ground. The black guy proceeds to say that if he is ever so much as talked to again by the other man, he will kill him. He repeats this over and over, and I have never seen anyone look so truly hateful.

He then walks out of the restaurant, and picks the money up off the ground. I really wish I would have just grabbed it when they were fighting inside, but I guess I didn't because I didn't want people to think I was stealing it? Or maybe I just didn't think quick enough. In any case he grabs all but two of the twenties which had blown to the side and I had stepped on so he didn't see them.

As he is walking away from the restaurant, the first guy hobbles out of the restaurant, only now realizing that his money was gone. He yells "You stupid n***** you are lucky I am disabled or I would f****** kill you." The black guy then responds "I am ready to die!" and literally sprints back to the restaurant.

The second he can, he kicks the other homeless man in his chest (he was hobbling and low to the ground). The kick results in a terrible fall with the man hitting his head on the ground. The police are still nowhere to be seen, but there is somewhat of a crowd forming around the scene.

At this moment I was really scared for the man on the ground, so I stepped in between the two men and said "I just called the cops, you better get the f*** out of here unless you want to get arrested." At that point the assailant turned and ran for good. I am still undecided as to the stupidity of what I did there, but I was sure at the time that the man (though larger and scarier than me) had no weapon, and I hoped that the crowd wouldn't let anything too serious happen.

The crowd quickly dissipates at this point and leaves the homeless man with myself and a waiter from the restaurant. We help him back into his chair, and try talking to him. At this point he is bawling incoherently, which is to say he was speaking words but no coherent sentences. I offer him $200 since I feel crappy about his money being stolen, but he won't accept it. Since his money was all in $20's I figure it was probably from some sort of government check he probably gets once a month. Losing all your money on the 7th probably is just about the worst thing that could happen to that sort of person. He eventually accepts $60 on top of the $40 that I saved for him, so at least he has something.

At this point I am genuinely worried about his health. I don't know if he is crazy or concussed or what, so I call an ambulance (still no police). About 2 minutes later both the fire department and the police show up, with paramedics taking the man to see if he is ok, and the police questioning me. When the police officer showed up I was on the phone, and they asked the homeless man who hurt him. He points at me, and I have to quickly hang up to tell the police that I didn't brutally beat this man then hang around with him to wait for the ambulance.

Apparently the police know both of these men. They are both crazy transients who stay close to the Westwood area. And I dont mean crazy in some offensive way, I mean they are both really crazy and should be locked up somewhere. Once the wheelchair man went into a local hooka bar and sprayed pepper spray randomly at people for kicks. The other man is known as dangerous and the police officer didn't seem surprised at all.

Unfortunately nothing will be done legally towards either man because neither of them are going to press charges. They are crazy homeless guys who can barely speak and shouldn't be on the streets. But since they are crazy they can't press charges or do things like file to be taken off the streets. Besides that, no one seemed to know what started the fight, and the police didn't care enough to ask anyone besides the two of us who were waiting.

The whole thing was one of the most bizarre events of my life. I genuinely didn't know what to do, and am very disappointed with the results. Anyway just thought I would share the story.