"Rage in his eyes": Former Olympian Kim Glass recovering from attack by homeless man in downtown LA
Her left eye remains blackened by an ugly bruise, a reddish sheen covers her left eyeball, and an abrasion on the right side of the bridge of her nose looks moist and tender to the touch. But even after surviving a brutal attack by a homeless man in the middle of downtown LA, a radiant smile is not far from former Olympian Kim Glass' face.
Glass, who won the silver medal with the U.S. women's indoor volleyball team at the 2008 Summer Olympics, is still recovering after the attack in downtown LA last Friday afternoon – but she's doing it surrounded by family, and flowers sent by friends and concerned fans.
"Well, first of all, my mama always said I had a hard head," she said with a laugh.
But the attack is still fresh in her memory, and Glass is fully aware of how much peril she was in. She suffered multiple fractures to her orbital bones, had to get multiple stitches, and her face remains severely bruised.
"My sister was like, 'he could have killed you,'" she said. "I don't like at it like that because he didn't, but he could have."
Glass had been walking with a friend last Friday in the area of Olive and 8th Street after having lunch when a homeless man approached them.
"He looked at me with, like, rage in his eyes," Glass recalled. She says she saw him coming, and when she turned to warn her friend, the man threw a construction bolt at her head.
"And I just fell to the ground, right? I fall to the ground, and my phone falls to the ground, and all of a sudden, blood's just squirting everywhere," she said. "I'm just praying, God, please let me be able to see after this."
Bystanders rushed to help her, and a man even held her attacker down until police arrived. He was identified as 51-year-old Semeon Tasfamarean and was charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Tasfamarean was on parole for assault, but he did not appear at his first court appearance because of possible mental illness.
Glass says as she learns more about Tasfamarean, she can't help but be angry – but not necessarily with him.
"It shouldn't have to take for people to die for us to make change, you know? And I honestly don't know what the full answer is, but what we're doing now isn't it," she said. "I feel bad for him because…you know? I don't know, I just feel bad for him, you can still feel for someone and still feel like they need to be held accountable, and he needs to be held accountable."
Since the attack, Glass has been unable to perform her work as a fitness model or a personal trainer. She says she thinks it may be a few months before she has fully healed.
"He almost took me away from my family, it's the most important thing in the world to me, you know?" she said tearfully. "But God knew I wasn't finished, you know what I mean? Like, he knew I had something to do, I think, and I'm trying to figure that out."
