Police in Riverside, California supposedly thought the severed hand that residents had reported seeing on the sidewalk was a movie prop. Then they found out that someone was being treated for a severed hand.
The man at the hospital said he had been injured by someone wielding a sword on Saturday night, Officer Ryan Railsback, a Riverside police spokesman, said in a statement to The Guardian.
Investigators with the police department’s robbery-homicide unit have yet to arrest anyone in the incident in Riverside, a city about 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles, but say it appears the victim and assailant were homeless. and it is possible that they knew each other. .
The victim, who Railsback says is in his 60s, was admitted to a local hospital on Saturday without a hand. Later that night, police responded to calls about a severed hand lying near an overturned shopping cart on a downtown street.
The victim is expected to survive, authorities said. The perpetrator of the attack is still on the run.
The man injured in the Riverside attack is well known in the community and well-liked by those who live and work downtown, according to a GoFundMe established to raise funds for the recovery of the victim.
“We fear that he will not have a safe and clean place to recuperate after he is released,” the page reads.
Although details of the relationship between the victim and the assailant remain unclear, the attack comes amid growing concern about violence against the homeless in America’s cities. A former San Francisco fire commissioner has also been accused of spraying multiple homeless people with bear mace.
In nearby Los Angeles, violence against homeless residents has increased in recent years, with the homeless accounting for 24% of the city’s homicide victims despite representing only 1% of the population, NBC Los Angeles. reported in january of this year.