A vicious Venice resident is on the run after he allegedly used a samurai sword to nearly hack off another man’s arm, leaving a bloody scene and shocking neighbors.
The angry swordsman allegedly used a 16-inch samurai blade to assault a 27-year-old victim on the street in front of a low-income housing complex at 720 Rose Ave. in Venice Thursday around 6:30 p.m., according to the police and fire officials.
The attacker was identified as 720 Rose Ave. resident Justin Tucker by the building’s management, nonprofit Venice Housing Corporation, which provides low-income housing and job services to the neighborhood’s inhabitants.
“You may be aware that there was an incident in front of Rose Apartments this evening,” states a wanted posted circulated in the area Friday by the nonprofit, which includes photos of Tucker.
“Unfortunately, our neighbor Justin Tucker was involved,” the poster continues. “He is suspected to be armed and dangerous.”
Venice Housing Corporation didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Police would not confirm Tucker as a suspect in the attack. He is described as a white man in his late 20’s, with a short haircut.
Two witnesses said the man identified as Tucker has just returned to 720 Rose Ave. from a shopping trip to a nearby Smart and Final when he was accosted by a man in front of the building who asked Tucker if he had any drugs.
Tucker went up to his unit and returned with a sword, the witnesses said. He then hacked the man in his left arm.
A horrified bystander called 911, prompting cops and paramedics to the scene. Medical workers rushed the bleeding victim to a local hospital in serious condition. Fire officials could not say whether his outlook had since improved.
A woman who lives nearby said she was called to the scene by a panicking friend who lives at 720 Rose Ave. When she got there, the victim was holding his injured arm above his head.
The limb was wrapped in a t-shirt and a plastic bandage, she said, but it was squirting blood.
“The blood was pooling under his arm and on the wall really quickly,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous because she fears reprisal from the vagrants in the area. “He kept saying, ‘it’s broken.’”
Luckily, the woman spotted a passerby in a hospital scrub who identified himself as a nurse. The nurse went to his car and returned with a torniquet, which they used to slow the man’s bleeding.
The alleged assailant was gone when cops got there. Police established a perimeter around the scene of the crime but their suspect evaded capture.
Witnesses said Tucker fled on foot, first walking in westbound in an alley behind Rose Avenue before reaching Seventh Avenue, where he emerged onto the street again and then disappeared.
Police are still hunting for the suspect, who was wearing a blue hat, blue jeans, a gray sweatshirt and a black hoodie when he left the area.
Thursday’s attack in Venice comes as the city has struggled to address spiraling violence in the area, with Rose Avenue serving as a locus of crime and disorder in the blighted yet unaffordable neighborhood.
The woman who responded to help the victim said that she has been assaulted on that block and once heard a woman screaming that she was being raped in the alley there.
The woman said the block deteriorated significantly when the low-income housing complex at 720 Rose Ave. opened there several years ago, and the police do not come as often as they should.
“There are horrible things happening here every day,” the woman said. “There are people on drugs walking around like zombies. It’s not safe. Nobody comes to help.”
