Woman blinded when man pours bleach on her face in Tenderloin

A woman was blinded Sunday evening in a vicious bleach attack in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, officials said.

The 57-year-old woman was sitting on the sidewalk on Mason Street, between Turk and Eddy streets, about 7:30 p.m., when a man in his early 20s approached her and poured bleach on her face, police said.

“She was sitting down when a man approached her and told her to get up and go away, and then he walked away,” said Officer Robert Rueca, a police spokesman. “He returned back to her with a cup in his hand — she believed it was bleach — and poured it on her, causing her to lose vision.”

The woman was rushed to a hospital, police said. No arrests have been made, and police did not specify whether the woman’s blindness was temporary or permanent.

The victim told police she did not know the attacker, Rueca said.

The woman’s address was not listed when police took the report, which could indicate that she is homeless or that she didn’t have identification on her at the time of the attack and was in too much distress to provide the information, according to Officer Grace Gatpandan, a police department spokeswoman.

Police initially said the woman was in life-threatening condition, but on Tuesday afternoon Gatpandan said the victim’s life was not threatened.

The attack occurred about six blocks from the area where a San Francisco police officer suffered chemical burns after bleach was poured on him from an open window in 2016.

In that case, an officer was responding to a report of a dog-bite victim when the owner of the dog in question, Kim Thuphuoc Tran, allegedly poured bleach on the officer from the sixth-story window of a building on the 100 block of Hyde Street, police said. Filipa Ioannou is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: fioannou@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @obioannoukenobi