LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 12: Kim Glass attends Maxim Electric Nights presented by DIRECTV at City Market on February 12, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)
Olympic medal-winning volleyball player Kim Glass was nearly blinded after a homeless man attacked her with a metal pipe in Los Angeles, according to video posted to her Instagram Stories, in a city where critics say a “soft-on-crime” district attorney is to blame.
In the video, the 37-year-old Glass can be seen sporting a massive black eye, which is swollen shut alongside what appears to be a bruised nose, as she recounts the harrowing story.
The 2008 silver medalist revealed that she thought she might have been blinded in her injured eye due to the severity of the attack but still kept a sense of humor about it somehow, describing herself as “ET” due to the massive amounts of swelling on the side of her face.
“He had something in his hand,” Glass said of the homeless man who “just ran up.” ”
And he just looked at me with some pretty hateful eyes,” she recalled.
“I do have multiple fractures.
Yes, I look like ET.”
The LAPD confirmed to Good Day LA that a suspect has been arrested and is currently still in custody in relation to the attack, however no name was publicly available as of Monday afternoon.
Glass said other people eventually held the man down until police arrived, with police adding that he had flung a large metal bolt at her face just prior.
“As I turned to tell my friend, ‘I think something’s wrong with him and I think he’s going to hit the car’ — before I knew it, a big metal bolt-like pipe hit me,” she said.
“It happened so fast. He literally flung it from the street,” said the retired volleyball player, who won a silver medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a part of Team USA.
“It kinda took me down and out,” she added, detailing how other people nearby “got him and held him down until the cops came.”
The attack on Glass comes amidst criticisms of the soft-on-crime Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon. Last week, activists taking part in a campaign to recall Gascon delivered 717,000 petition signatures in support of the effort to the county last Wednesday, according to the New York Post.
The controversial top prosecutor has been plagued with accusations of being soft on crime in a city with growing and troubling crime statistics, including a rule against seeking the death penalty, a ban on transferring juvenile defendants to adult court, as well as prohibitions on filing sentencing enhancements in most cases.
Gascon’s critics argue his directives have undermined the criminal justice system and contributed to rising crime rates in LA County.
The embattled DA has most recently made headlines after the deaths of two El Monte police officers, with critics blaming Gascon for allowing William Flores, a man with a lengthy criminal record, out on probation at the time of the fatal shootings.
City officials only recently started cleaning up “dangerous” homeless encampments in Venice Beach, with the Los Angeles Times reporting workers began phase one of the process, which involved trying to convince the homeless population to relocate to shelters, according to the outlet.
