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Surveillance video of the suspects
Sabrina de la Peña was first assaulted in April, and the same attackers returned over the weekend.
A transgender business owner in Los Angeles was attacked Saturday by the same men who assaulted her previously.
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Sabrina de la Peña, 61, operates a convenience store in the city’s Westlake neighborhood. A young man who came into the store April 8 started flirting with her. When she rebuffed him, he pushed her to the floor and sexually assaulted her, discovering she is trans. He returned with two others and attacked her multiple times. He struck her with a skateboard, doused her with pepper spray, and threw some kind of liquid at her while one of his companions tried to stun her with a Taser.
The same men came back Saturday and assaulted her again, seriously injuring her, according to local media outlets. The reports did not state the nature of her injuries. The suspects left before police arrived.
De la Peña believes the men targeted her because she is trans. The first man threatened to kill her several times, she told TV station KABC after one of the earlier attacks. “You know how you feel when you think people didn’t want you, didn’t love you, because you are so different?” she said. “We don’t do nothing wrong ... we are different, that’s our life.”
She has run the store for 30 years and has never felt unsafe there until now, she said.
The Los Angeles Police Department is asking for the public’s help in apprehending the suspects, who have been filmed on surveillance video. Anyone with information should call the LAPD’s Rampart Division Detectives at (213) 484-3495 or leave an anonymous tip at L.A. Regional Crime Stoppers Hotline, (800) 222-8477, or at www.lacrimestoppers.org, police said.
