A Long Beach, California, hair salon, local residents, and business owners say the area has deteriorated due to mentally ill and drug-addicted homeless people.
Video appeared of a homeless man masturbating in front of the hair salon, terrifying women inside the business. The homeless man was “staring at women through a window at this nail salon. His hand is inside his pants, committing a lewd act right in broad daylight,” said a reporter with Fox 11 Los Angeles.
“He just came to the window and started masturbating. We kept telling him to stop and banged on the window and he wouldn’t move,” said Salon 500 owner Valeska Quinones.
“It’s daily, it’s daily. It’s scary. You do not feel safe walking the streets here,” added Zoe Garcia, who saw the incident and called police. “[Police] took two hours to arrive,” Garcia told KTLA reporter John Fenoglio. “Most times, they don’t even come out.”
The incident was just a week removed from an alleged sexual assault outside the same salon. A woman named Rebekah Pederson was reportedly attacked by a different homeless man, Miguel Avila, who allegedly stood up, exposed himself, and then attacked Pederson from behind.
A nearby elderly man is seen on video getting up and pepper-spraying the suspect, who then fled from the scene.
The suspect was charged with sexual battery and vandalism, which are misdemeanors.
Upon hearing of the charges, the victim was angered to find out out that the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office didn’t see fit to charge the man with a felony.
“Nobody in their right mind looked at that video and thought anything less than attempted rape,” Pederson said.
The district attorney’s office confirmed to local outlet KTLA that it received a letter from the city’s attorney asking for more serious charges. However, the office claimed that the case was “carefully reviewed previously” and that it will send the case to the head deputy of the sex crimes division to “review the evidence and interview a witness that was located after [the] initial decision was made to determine whether any felony charges are provable.”
The accused Avila remains in jail with a $75,000 bond. He is due back in court on November 8, 2023.
Police are still searching for the window-masturbating suspect, however.
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