A homeless man nearly blinded Olympian Kim Glass in a Los Angeles attack. Glass revealed her facial injuries she sustained after she was struck in the face with a metal pipe by a homeless man who threw the weapon at her.
The model’s horrific attack, which occurred on Saturday, was shared on Instagram. The 37-year-old former athlete and model showed her right eye completely shut, blackened, stitched, and a nasty gash on her nose.
“I do have multiple fractures,” she said of her injuries, which she had feared would leave her blind in that eye.
“Yes, I look like ET,” joked Glass, who has previously appeared in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue as well as ESPN’s The Body Issue.
The homeless man approached Glass as she was leaving lunch in downtown LA in an area where, because of his soft stance on crime policies that allow mentally ill criminals to remain free, locals are working to remove county district attorney George Gascon.
“He had something in his hand,” she said. The homeless man “just ran up.”
“And he just looked at me with some pretty hateful eyes,” she recalled.
“As I turned to tell my friend, ‘I think something’s wrong with him, and I think he’s going to hit the car’ — before I knew it, a big metal bolt-like pipe hit me,” she said.
“It happened so fast. He literally flung it from the street,” said the retired volleyball player.
“It kinda took me down and out,” she said, detailing how other people nearby “got him and held him down until the cops came.”
The athlete, who has lived all around the world, has spoken out, warning others to stay safe in crime-ridden Los Angeles.
“Guys, just be safe out there … there’s a lot of mentally ill people on these streets right now,” she said in a second video.
“You shouldn’t have to be fearful when you walk, but it’s true. You guys just be safe, OK,” she said, later writing that she was grateful because it “could have been SO much worse.”
