Montgomery County police are looking for six people in connection with the recent beatings of four homeless people in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Five men and a woman attacked three men and a woman while they slept outside in a plaza early July 16, police said.
The woman was sleeping at a table when someone punched her in the face, police said. When she went for her phone to call for help, one of the attackers took it from her and broke it.
Surveillance video of one of the attacks — edited by police — begins with a car described as a dark-colored Honda Civic approaching the plaza near Fenton Street and Ellsworth Drive before 5 a.m. July 16. Then it shows three people walking onto the plaza before showing the vicious assault of one of the victims, who was punched and kicked while on the ground.
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Another man was asleep on a bench when he was attacked, police said.
Another man was chased on Ellsworth Drive toward Georgia Avenue, police said. The suspects stopped chasing him, eventually.
“It’s terrible,” a homeless woman in the plaza told News4 Tuesday. “It’s not right. People deserve to sleep and be comfortable wherever they are without being attacked.”
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She said the attacks don’t make her afraid to sleep in the plaza.
“I’m used to it,” she said.
Jonathan Goldstein, who described himself as an urban camper, and he’s never been assaulted in the plaza but is not surprised by the attack or its viciousness.
“These are people who have pent-up hostility and clearly wanted to vent it on someone that they seemingly could get away with venting it on,” he said.
Two of the victims were taken to the hospital for treatment.
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