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(Trends Wide Spanish) — Ramiro Pérez, at 47, is in the process of understanding how in just an instant he felt between life and death after an encounter with an unknown amputee of both legs and in a wheelchair, who assaulted him, he assures, without any justification.
In statements to Trends Wide, Pérez says that the afternoon of that meeting he was walking towards his house when suddenly, without any provocation, a man who was advancing on his stumps attacked him with a knife from the left side, near the area of the heart. . Pérez says that he lost strength in his legs, fell to the ground and realized that the blood was gushing non-stop.
“When he first attacked me, I felt it was a blow, but when I felt the gush of blood in my mind, the first thing that happened to me was to try to stop the blood and ask for help, not my children, not God,” recalls Pérez. He recounts that he sought help to be able to ask for help, but it was up to the fourth person who reported it to 911. Pérez details that paramedics and police arrived from the city of Huntington Park, located in East Los Angeles, where the events occurred.
Ramiro Pérez maintains that he never imagined that a man in such a vulnerable condition could be capable of something so extreme, “who would have thought that he was going to attack me? Nobody. That did not come to my mind either, I cannot read his mind, but He looked at himself like any other person,” he says. He says the attacker asked him “are you okay?” Pérez lowered his face to respond, saw that the subject was walking on his stump, looked into his eyes and before he knew it, he says, the attacker stabbed him with a knife.
Huntington Park police in a statement explained that on the afternoon of January 26 they responded to a report of a stabbing and upon arrival, officers found a victim suffering from a life-threatening stab wound that resulted in a collapsed lung and internal bleeding.
In the same statement, they indicate that the victim identified the attacker as a black man in a wheelchair, from which he got out and advanced “towards the victim and without any provocation, stabbed him in the side of the chest with a butcher knife from 12 inches and then fled the scene in his wheelchair. The injured man provided the last location of the suspect and was taken to a hospital.”
The document details that the agents located the alleged attacker a few blocks away with a 30-centimeter meat cleaver. Police say they tried to arrest him, but the suspect ignored verbal commands and threatened to move forward or throw the knife at the officers. Police officers used tasers on two occasions to subdue the suspect, but the measure was ineffective, according to the statement.
The suspect continued to threaten the agents with the knife and as a result, they explain, the shots that caused his death were fired. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department said the suspect was shot in the upper torso and pronounced dead at the scene. The man was identified by his family as 36-year-old Anthony Lowe.
Lawyers for Lowe’s family filed a claim against the city, the first step toward a potential wrongful death lawsuit. Huntington Park officials have 45 days to respond, after which a lawsuit can be filed in state court. The family awaits the results of the autopsy.
The videos, keys in the investigation of the attack in Huntington Park
Anthony Lowe’s family has not referred to the videos that the police have made public and in which he is seen wounding Ramiro Perez with a butcher knife.
At a press conference, the Huntington Park Police Chief, Cosme Lozano, said that the authorities involved in this investigation hope that the videos captured by the surveillance cameras of the businesses and the calls to 911 will allow them to clarify what happened before the incident between Lowe and officers; as well as the attack suffered by Ramiro Perez, the passerby who, as seen in the images, was injured by Lowe, moments before the fatal outcome.
Cosme Lozano mentioned that they are business videos because his staff do not have body cameras. Lozano also said, when presenting the 911 audios and videos provided by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, that the goal is to “advance full disclosure and transparency of events that occurred from start to finish.”
In the 911 call, the voice of the man helping Perez is heard, and he says in Spanish; “He is badly injured. The operator asks him:“ did they stab him ”? And whoever is with Perez answers:“ aha ”.
A video shows how Lowe approaches Ramiro from behind and apparently attacks him; the victim quickens her pace to walk away as Lowe moves in the opposite direction, toward his wheelchair.
A second video captures the moment police located the suspect. Initially, two officers with gun drawn remove him from his wheelchair, Lowe steps on his stumps away from the officers and he is seen to raise the knife; a third policeman intervenes, the three, apparently, are aiming at the suspect who continues with the knife in his hands, at that moment they shoot.
The officers involved were placed on paid administrative leave pending ongoing investigations.
“That knife would have pierced his heart”
Annee Della Donna, a lawyer for the Lowe family, has said that “there was no reason to shoot a man with 11 amputated legs in the back.” The family has said Lowe had mental problems since he had his legs amputated last year.
The police chief has reported that the case follows the process established by state law, that it is up to the Sheriff’s department to conclude the investigations and then the report will go to the Los Angeles prosecutor’s office.
In a statement, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told Trends Wide that the knife was recovered at the scene and there is no additional information at this time. For its part, the prosecutor’s office also in a statement told Trends Wide that the case has not yet been submitted to its offices for review.
Soledad Pérez, mother of Ramiro Pérez, told Trends Wide that she thanks God that her son is alive, otherwise, today there would be two mothers crying over the death of their children, who did not know each other. “That knife would have pierced his entire heart because it was big, it was not a small knife, you can see it in the video,” says Soledad Pérez.
Ramiro Pérez spent 8 days in the hospital, and says that he is recovering little by little from the physical injury, but not from the emotional blow. He says he is afraid when he is in the street, he is afraid that they might attack him; and he has asked himself many times what motives his aggressor had to put him on the verge of death, he asks what he says; he will never have an answer. He has mixed feelings about Lowe’s death and is investigating whether he has legal options in the face of the attack on him; he considers himself the victim on the other side of this story.
