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A teenage girl and her boyfriend were viciously beaten in Venice Beach in a brutal attack that was caught on video. The girl appeared to be the main target and was struck in the head with a skateboard.
On Thursday night around 8:30 p.m., 16-year old Brooklyn Smith and her boyfriend were jumped by a large group of men near Speedway and Windward Avenue. They were walking to their car when Smith says two of the men had recognized her from a previous incident last month, when she was told not to come back to Venice. "Before we could even say anything, it was like, 'Oh, that’s her, that’s her,'" she told KTLA.
"Go back home!" one of the men can be heard screaming in video of the incident recorded by a Twitter user.
Smith and her boyfriend were knocked to the ground after being repeatedly kicked and punched, and in the video you can see Smith getting hit in the head with a skateboard. The beatdown continues on Smith after she is already down on the pavement. A witness can be heard in the video saying, "They just cracked her head open."
Smith required staples to close a 4-inch gash on the back of her head, while her boyfriend lost a tooth and needed stitches on his head and lips. The girl says her life may have been saved by a bystander who lay on top of her in the middle of the scrum. "If it wasn't for her, Lord knows what they would be doing to me. They were hurting her too... because she was screaming."
Locals in the area say fights aren't unusual, but this particular one was especially vicious. Just last week a local restaurant owner had his fingertip bitten off by a transient. "I'm just really disgusted. Skateboards aren't to be used for violence like that, and I just hope that people don't think this is what we do in Venice," a skateboarder told ABC 7.
So far no arrests have been made, and the LAPD is trying to determine whether the attack was gang-related. Smith says she could recognize some of her attackers if she sees them again.
Warning: the videos below are extremely violent and intense.
@Venice311 pic.twitter.com/03TFx0KkbV
— Lexi Braun (@lexibraun) March 27, 2015
@Venice311 part two pic.twitter.com/62LD4dJqrZ
— Lexi Braun (@lexibraun) March 27, 2015
