On Friday, July 13 (unlucky for some?), at 12:52 p.m. officers of the Santa Monica Police Department went to the Ocean Park Community Center (an establishment that attempts to assist homeless people), located at 503 Olympic Drive in order to investigate an assault report.
When they they spoke with the victim, a man, who told the officers he had been chatting with a woman (friend) outside the facility when a man walked up to them and unilaterally decided to become a guest in the conversation.
The victim told the officers that he had asked the unwanted guest to step away from the conversation.
This angered that unwanted guest and he walked off, but returned about 20 minutes later armed with a knife. The unwanted guest told the victim that he was going to stab him in the heart (probably resulting in the death of the victim).
The unwanted guest then proved to everyone why he was the unwanted guest by attempting to stab and slash the victim in the chest.
At that moment a witness stopped in her vehicle and told the unwanted guest that she was calling the police, and the unwanted guest walked off (at last!).
The victim did not suffer any injury and the officers went in search of the now wanted guest (of the police department) and detained him in the 1600 block of Seventh Street.
The officers investigated further and discovered a second victim, a woman, who told them that she too had experienced a confrontation with the wanted unwanted guest and that he had tried to stab her as well.
The officers recovered the knife that the suspect had used from some shrubbery nearby.
The officers arrested this 44-year-old homeless man and he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and a violation of probation.
His bail was set at $30,000.
Editor’s Note: These reports are part of a regular police coverage series entitled “Alert Police Blotter” (APB), which injects some minor editorial into certain police activities in Santa Monica. Not all of the Mirror’s coverage of incidents involving police are portrayed in this manner. More serious crimes and police-related activities are regularly reported without editorial in the pages of the Santa Monica Mirror and its website, smmirror.com.
