Police in Riverside, California, reportedly thought the detached hand residents had reported seeing on the sidewalk was a movie prop. Then they learned that someone was being treated for a severed hand.
The man in the hospital said that he had been injured by someone wielding a sword on Saturday night, officer Ryan Railsback, a spokesperson for the Riverside police, said in a statement to the Guardian.
Investigators with the police department’s robbery-homicide unit have yet to arrest anyone in the incident in Riverside, a city about 50 miles south-east of Los Angeles, but say it appears that the victim and assailant were both homeless and may have known one another.
The victim, who Railsback says is in his 60s, came into a local hospital on Saturday with a missing hand. Later that evening police responded to calls about a severed hand lying near an overturned shopping cart on a downtown street.
The victim is expected to survive, officials said. The perpetrator of the attack is still at large.
The man injured in the Riverside attack is well-known in the community and liked by those who live and work in the downtown area, according to a GoFundMe set up to raise funds for the victim’s recovery.
“We fear he will not have a safe and clean place to recover after being released,” the page reads.
Though the specifics of the victim and assailant’s relationship remain unclear, the attack comes amid growing concerns about violence against unhoused people in US cities. A former San Francisco fire commissioner has also been accused of spraying several homeless people with bear mace.
In nearby Los Angeles, violence against homeless residents has increased in recent years, unhoused people accounting for 24% of the city’s homicide victims despite making up just 1% of the population, NBC Los Angeles reported in January of this year.
