Lea esta historia en español aquí.
A street vendor who works on the corner of Long Beach Boulevard and Burnett Street was assaulted and robbed on Saturday, Jan. 16 and two GoFundMe’s set up by local community members have raised over $10,000 in support of him.
The vendor, identified by the name of Gerardo Ivan Olmeda del Pilar of Frutas Frescas El Jarocho, was selling fresh fruit out of his cart when he was assaulted by two young Black males according to witnesses.
The two Black men approached Olmeda del Pilar asking for fruit and while he was preparing their order, one man reached into a backpack and took out a work helmet which was used to strike Olmeda del Pilar in the face before they dragged and kicked him while he was on the floor and robbed him of $500. In photos uploaded to Gerardo’s vending Instagram account he appears with a bloodied white t-shirt and a bruised face.
Alex Diaz, an organizer of one of the GoFundMe’s who saw Olmeda del Pilar’s injuries first-hand gave him his own shirt to replace the blood stained one he was wearing.
“If I took the shirt off my back to give it to this man so he wouldn’t go home looking so bloody to his family, you guys can give at least something to him,” Diaz said in the GoFundMe he created to help Olmeda Del Pilar, which has raised $5,676 as of publishing time.
A man who identified himself as Olmeda del Pilar’s uncle, Victor, who was working the same fruit cart on Monday, Jan. 18 told the Signal Tribune in Spanish that Olmeda del Pilar went to a hospital for his wounds that morning. The uncle said the wounds now appeared worse than the day he was attacked, and that the injury Olmeda del Pilar suffered on his left eye was bad enough that he still couldn’t see clearly.
“He can open it, but it clearly affected him,” Olmeda del Pilar’s uncle said.
When asked if he had been attacked himself Victor said, “Yes but not as bad, and the attacks were less often before….This is a very hot area, another work partner of mine was assaulted and robbed of his cellphone.”
Another community member named Marissa Gomez has also created a separate GoFundMe for Olmeda del Pilar which has raised $4,768 as of publishing time, together amounting a total of $10,444.
