Suicidal Empathy Leaves Woman With Six Fewer Teeth, Bludgeoned Face

Eva Woods, a Los Angeles woman involved in distributing meals to the homeless, was reportedly assaulted by a stranger during lunch service Sunday.

“[A] woman came through the park with a metal pipe. Without conversation, she came up behind Eva and hit her in the jaw. Eva was taken to the hospital and had surgery the following day on her upper and lower jaw, both of which were broken. Her jaw is wired shut for the next four weeks, and then she’ll be able to get dental implants to replace the six teeth she lost,” reads a GoFundMe page created for Woods by Catherine Schetina. (RELATED: Homeless Repeat Offender Blinds Elderly Woman With Nail Through Her Eye) 

Schetina declines to specify whether the suspect herself was homeless. I have my suspicions. The New York Post describes MacArthur Park as “LA’s fentanyl ground zero — a collapsing, chaos-soaked war zone where overdoses hit by the hour, people die daily, crime crews corner the market.” 

NBC News visited the park in 2024. 

“I can imagine how it used to be,” a man who has worked near the park for 34 years told NBC. “I can imagine families walking to the park, kids having fun, running around. Now you see the homeless problem, the drug addicts … 24 hours hanging out there.” 

NBC spoke to a father, who said in Spanish, “It’s kind of scary because there are a lot of people who are drugged up. And so we are scared to walk through there.”

“Open fentanyl abuse is now so common, the drug might as well be an unofficial symbol of the park,” writes Saul Gonzalez for KCRW, an NPR member station broadcasting from Southern California. 

Speaking of the suspect, Schetina writes, “This woman, and this incident, are not representative of the culture of MacArthur Park and the community we serve there. 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, and we would truly hate for the people who rely on us, and who we have built such incredible relationships with over the past six years, to suffer as a result of this single woman’s actions.”

Schetina repeatedly refers to the homeless as “unhoused.” But “homeless” is equally as misleading as “unhoused.” Terms like “bum” and “vagrant” better reflect reality. 

In truth, most American metropolises maintain a sizable population of roving lunatics, most of whom are in the throes of drug addiction. Many of them are violent — toward each other, and toward the general population. Rape is a fact of life in tent cities and open-air drug markets. (RELATED: Homeless Repeat Offender Allegedly Slashes Teen’s Neck Days After Release) 

The woman who assaulted Woods was likely a crazed bum. She belonged in an institution and now belongs in prison. 

The New York Post makes reference to a “mental health crisis” in Los Angeles.

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

“Mental health crisis” is not how I’d construe a lady knocking the teeth out of a stranger’s head. It seems closer to “evil” to me. 

Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatSandovalDC