Lesson to be learned?

Shot:

National park death exposes repeated rule violations as tourists take dangerous risks

Experts concerned visitors are ignoring safety rules near canyons, waterfalls and steep walking paths

Chaser:

Woman brutally beaten at MacArthur Park while feeding homeless

A woman known for feeding the homeless each week in MacArthur Park was savagely attacked with a metal pipe while serving meals, leaving her with a shattered jaw and six teeth knocked out, according to a fundraiser created to help cover her mounting medical bills.

The GoFundMe page, organized by Catherine Schetina on behalf of longtime volunteer Eva Woods, says the violent attack happened during the group’s regular Sunday lunch service in the park in late February.

The suspect approached Woods from behind without warning and struck her in the face with a metal pipe, according to the fundraiser.

“During our regular lunch service on Sunday, Feb. 22, a woman came through the park with a metal pipe. Without conversation, she came up behind Eva and hit her in the jaw,” the page states.

Woods was rushed to the hospital and underwent surgery the following day. Doctors said both her upper and lower jaw had been broken in the assault, the GoFundMe page states. It also says that Wood’s jaw has been wired shut and she will require dental implants to replace the six teeth she lost in the attack.

Friends say Woods has spent the last six years running the MacArthur Project, a volunteer-run mutual aid effort that provides more than 700 meals each week to homeless people living in the park.

Volunteers serve food three times a week and regularly distribute hygiene kits, groceries, tents and other supplies.

“This woman, and this incident, are not representative of the culture of MacArthur Park and the community we serve there,” Schetina wrote. “She is not someone we’ve met in the past, and others in the park weren’t familiar with her. This was absolutely a bizarre one-off.”

But the attack unfolded in a park long tied to a relentless stream of emergency calls.

The California Post recently reported that areas such as Skid Row and MacArthur Park generate a staggering number of 911 calls as first responders grapple with the city’s spiraling homelessness and mental health crisis.

Roughly one-third of all calls to the Los Angeles Police Department, about 40 calls every hour, involve someone suffering a mental health crisis, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell told The Post.

Firefighters on the front lines say the numbers are just as staggering. Los Angeles Fire Department Station 11, which serves the MacArthur Park area, responded to 8,568 ambulance runs in the first eight months of 2025, compared with just 55 structure fires, making it one of the busiest firehouses in the country.

(To be fair to this Good Samaritan, I spent three years volunteering at the Portland Maine soup kitchen, 3X a week, and, aside from a few crazies, the recipients were often grateful, sometimes indifferent, but not particularly violent, at least with us.

Two incidents:

I once inadvertently left my car parked, running and unlocked, on a nearby street while I did two shifts; returning, I saw what I’d so carelessly done, and was astonished that, in such a rough neighborhood, the car was still there. A ragged man — possibly, dare I say it,one of Portland’s Somalian refugees — left a group of men on the sidewalk and approached me: “Don’t worry, mon, we know whose car this is, and we been keeping an eye on it — wasn’t no one gonna touch it.”.

Another time, walking in the same area after serving breakfast, a very large, very ragged man stepped in front of me and poked a finger at my face: “You work at the kitchen, don’t you?” “Uh oh, I thought, here it comes: he didn’t like his oatmeal”, but I admitted that I did. “Well god bless you”, jabbing his finger at me again, “God bless you!” and he walked way.

So they’re some good people out there. Fellow volunteers and I sometimes discussed whether our efforts weren’t just enabling them, deterring them from doing something about their lives and seeking help, but decided that was a question above our pay scale: they were hungry, we were feeding them, and let someone else figure out what to do with them aside from that.

That said, Portland Maine does a pretty good job of taking the most violent lunatics off the city streets; LA leaves them in situ, free to roam and attack, just as NYC does; I wouldn’t risk my life in either place.)