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A senior resident of was brutally beaten by a homeless man in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, and the attacker was caught thanks to a quick-thinking security guard.
The attack took place on Saturday afternoon around 3:40 p.m. near 7th and Olive streets, when police say the homeless man kicked and punched the man as he was walking down the street. "He pushed one man and then he headed to the other man, took his backpack and hit him and stomped on his head," Teresa Morales, who witnessed the attack from her second-story window, told ABC 7.
"We thought he was dead," said Morales.
Waltay Simmons was working as a security guard at the Whole Foods supermarket across the street when the beating took place. "I heard somebody yell, 'Oh my God!' I turned around and caught the tail end of a guy stomping a senior citizen's head into the ground," Simmons told NBC 4. "I just yelled at him and ran at him. He saw me and started running into the Domino's parking lot."
"When I asked him what was his problem, he said 'He tried to rape me,'" Simmons told ABC 7. That's when the homeless man charged Simmons. The security guard used pepper spray in self-defense and ultimately tackled and handcuffed the man.
LAPD arrested the homeless man, who was later identified as 46-year-old LaFawn Parker, according to NBC 4. He is believed to be mentally ill, and police say the attack was unprovoked.
The victim, according to ABC 7, lives in a senior living home on the same block, and was listed in critical condition on Sunday night. Video and photos from the scene show him lying unconscious in a pool of blood on the sidewalk as a result of the attack.
Parker faces an attempted murder charge, pending a mental health evaluation.
"A guy without his medicine and a victim who was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Simmons said to NBC 4. "I think both of them were victims, really."
