Car attacked for hours
Bystanders gawked as the vehicle was defaced in Koreatown on Thanksgiving Day.
A persistent vandal spent six hours smashing, scratching and jumping up and down on a single parked car in Koreatown on Thanksgiving Day, as bystanders and surveillance cameras documented the holiday spectacle, authorities said.
Stacy Omelianoff parked her Buick Lucerne in front of a friend’s apartment before heading to a celebration in Chino, KCBS-TV reported. While she was away, the black sedan apparently caught the eye of a homeless woman walking through the area.
A security camera on a nearby apartment building recorded the woman as she tore off one of the car’s windshield wipers and used it to carve letters and scribbles into the paint. The woman then used a metal pipe and a piece of wood to scratch, smash and graffiti the doors, hood and roof of the car over a period of hours.
Video showed the woman at times sitting on the hood and walking onto the roof and jumping up and down. Omelianoff ’s tires were flattened and the grill of the car yanked out, she told KCBS.
Many people who saw the woman vandalizing the car did nothing to help, Omelianoff told KCBS.
“They would come by, stop, back up, take pictures, video, and just take off,” she said.
Omelianoff didn’t discover the vandalism until the next day when she was notified by the Los Angeles Police Department, which had arrested the woman after a witness called police, KCBS reported.
“I’m angry, I’m hurt, frustrated, and at the same time I understand that she has a mental problem,” Omelianoff said of the woman. She said video showed the car being vandalized in two time periods over the holiday, for a total of six hours.
The woman was taken to the hospital for a mental evaluation, news outlets reported.