Video Appears To Show Rape Of Homeless Woman On Venice Street

VENICE, CA — A series of disturbing attacks on a homeless woman in Venice have rattled the community and left authorities searching for her attackers. The assaults were recorded by a Venice resident horrified by the scene that unfolded on a busy Venice street recently.

The troubling video, aired by Fox11 News, appears to show a rape that took place in the 300 block of Lincoln Boulevard on Jan. 17. A homeless man appears to undress and have sex with a passed out homeless woman as she lies on a street corner in a pool of vomit. After the assault is over, another man runs across the street, chases away the attacker and proceeds to beat and berate the woman while accusing her of allowing herself to be raped.

A bystander recorded the entire encounter in disgust before realizing she was taping a rape.

“I definitely witnessed a rape,” she told Fox. The witness withheld her name out of fear for her own safety. “He basically ran over to her, pulled down his pants, lied down next to her and started pulling down her pants and kind of covering them and having sex with her.”

Afterwards, the witness walked toward the woman and realized she was incapacitated and didn’t appear conscious. That is when the second man came over and hit the woman with a bottle, yelling at her for getting drunk and passing out and “cheating on him” by being raped, the witness told Fox.

Los Angeles police were called to the scene in response to the second attack. They took a report of an assault with a deadly weapon and are looking for the suspect seen on the video beating and yelling at the woman, an LAPD spokesman told Patch.

According, to the LAPD, the woman did not report the rape, and responding officers did not open a rape investigation. With the emergence of the video on Fox, authorities are asking for the woman to come forward to report the rape.

The case remains under investigation.

It’s the latest in a series of troubling attacks involving homeless victims in Venice. As the burden of the city’s homeless epidemic falls heavily on Venice, the community has grappled with crime perpetrated against and by the homeless community.

In recent years, there have been multiple shootings into a Venice homeless camp, a hit and run death of a sleeping homeless man, and the shooting death of a homeless man following an argument with the owner of a business near a makeshift encampment. And in 2018, four sleeping homeless victims were beaten to death by a suspected serial killer now awaiting trial. Earlier this month, a homeless man was arrested after allegedly trying to wrestle a toddler away from her family at an outdoor cafe.