Start Date: June 8, 2022
These days we often hear the expression “The War on Women”. Often it is an embarrassing hyperbole about a tweet or a complaint about alleged “toxic masculinity”. Perhaps a female performer had her show cancelled or a female candidate failed to get elected.
But WAR, as displayed in Steven Spielberg’s movie, “Saving Private Ryan”, is bloody and brutal and often fatal. This is the war against women that matters most and it is playing out every day. Here are just some of the casualties.
March 2021
66 year old Jeanne Edgar and her dog are both stabbed to death by a homeless man in midday while walking her dog in a park in San Dimas, CA [1].
April 2021
64 year old Ke Chieh Meng is stabbed to death walking her dog in the morning in Riverside CA by a homeless woman who had been arrested days earlier for another assault, and then released [2].
July 2021
A 58 year old woman dies from injuries received after having been pushed down the stairs of a Manhattan subway station [3].
January 2022:
24 year old grad student, Brianna Kupfer, is stabbed, 26 times, to death working at a store in midday, in a tony section of L.A., by a homeless man [4].
40 year old financial advisor, Michelle Go, is thrown into a subway to a hideous death by a homeless man [5].
70 year old nurse, Sandra Shells, who had worked at USC Medical Center for 38 years, is killed, having been punched by a homeless man at a bus station near the hospital [6].
A 26 year old girl sitting at a bus stop in Florida is approached from behind by a man who strangles her with shoelaces. She fought back while he punched and choked her. With the aid of a good Samaritan she survives [7].
A woman in Seattle was approached from behind by a strange man who swung a baseball bat at her head causing skull fractures [8].
February 2022
A 57 year old woman at the Queens subway station is attacked by a man who approached from behind and repeatedly struck her with a hammer. She suffered skull fractures [9].
35 year old, Christina Lee, was followed into her Manhattan apartment on an early Sunday morning by a man who then stabbed her to death and left her body in the bath tub [10].
July 2022
While having lunch with a friend in downtown L.A., a former Olympic volleyball player was attacked by a homeless man who came from nowhere and threw a metal pipe at her head, leaving her with a fractured cheek and one eye swollen shut. Although a tall powerful athletic woman, she had no warning or chance to protect herself [11].
September 2022
33 year old Elizabeth Gomes, a TSA agent, while at a Queens train station, is followed by a homeless man who slammed her into a wall, threw her to the ground, and repeatedly punched and kicked her. She may lose her right eye and go blind [12].
61 year old Alison Russo-Elling, an EMS lieutenant who had served during the world Trade Center attack and been cited multiple times for bravery, was stabbed, over a dozen times, to death by a strange man, walking just outside her EMS station at lunch hour [13].
October 2022: A woman walking in L.A. in daytime is struck in the head when a man on a scooter hurls a fire extinguisher at her. She will likely survive with a concussion [14].
January 2023
Dilma Spruill, a 71 year old postal worker is stabbed to death while walking home from work in West Oakland. Her killer is charged with both murder and attempted murder, as he had allegedly stabbed another woman two days earlier. It seems you have to successfully murder to go to jail these days [15].
How much more creative will people get in finding ways to attack women??
I am sure you felt after the first few citations, “Stop, please, stop”. Exactly! We need this to stop. But it seems to be getting worse. What should be nightly national news is now a a brief local story. Just another day in paradise?
These women were in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, and even 70’s. They were white, Asian, black, and Hispanic. A grad student, a nurse, a financial professional, a health administrator, a music producer, a life-saving first responder. They were daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers. The scenarios are not the demented arguments about whether a pretty young girl can jog in Central Park late at night. They were waiting for the bus, working at a store, going to the office, on duty at a fire station, walking their dogs, going home. Women should be allowed to do these things in a civilized society. These are not crimes, and until recently, were not considered risky behaviors. This is simply life. We are not, I hope, Afghanistan. Women should not fear death if they leave the house without an adult male guardian. If women cannot feel safe to exist this is truly a war on women.
Did you notice what is missing in all of these assaults? Guns. NO GUNS! If a politician wants to give lip service to caring about crime they say they want to eliminate guns. While impossible, it wouldn’t matter. Women are attacked with knives, fists, hammers, bats, shoelaces, stairs, trains, pipes, and now fire extinguishers. If all the guns in the world disappeared overnight, not one of these women would be saved. If anything they would have had a better chance if they had, and were trained to use, a gun. But that is just arming them for the war, not ending it.
What is so different from historical violence is the assailants. If you watch crime dramas, be they fiction or real-life, the victim knows the killer. Children are killed by parents, spouses by spouses, businesses partners, gangs, etc. In the past you had to be related to someone to inspire this level of brutality. So I have made a point of not including attacks between couples, families, or those who know each other. I also have excluded sexual assaults and robberies or crime for profit.
All of these attacks were by strangers. There was no provocation, just random, irrational, savage violence. Most were homeless men with mental issues and drug problems. More importantly, it doesn’t seem to be the first time they acted in violence. At least one was on parole and even suspected of an earlier murder in his young teens. Another had just been arrested days earlier for another assault while on drugs.
The real enemy isn’t a person. It is an idea. They were killed by a notion of “social justice” that designates people who cannot be held accountable for less than lethal, or nearly lethal, crimes. For reasons of identity, or circumstance of homelessness, or mental illness and drug use, they are deemed somehow “not guilty by dysfunction” and left to the streets or shelters with fingers crossed that the inevitable won’t happen. We are told that they are the victims. The women they kill are simply collateral damage.
This is the WAR ON WOMEN and it has to stop!
The first, and most essential, step is to acknowledge that these events aren’t earthquakes, or tornados. They aren’t acts of nature or God. We can insist leadership allow the enforcement of laws, district attorneys prosecute, judges sentence appropriately, and that the mentally ill be diverted to care in confinement. Society can return to being a place where women, (and children, the elderly, the disabled, and yes men) can live in relative security.
But in addition to guns there is something even more suspiciously missing. Women. Where is the National Organization for Women? Where are the feminists? Where is “The Squad”? Where is Gloria Steinhem, Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Nancy Pelosi? Where is AOC? She went postal and national when a man heckled her on the steps of the Capitol. She supposedly represents Astoria, where the EMS worker was stabbed to death, and parts of Queens, where a Hispanic mother of five was beaten to blindness. Yet she and all the other feminists say and do nothing. So afraid that someone will tweet a challenge to their “progressive” bona fides. I can think of no greater betrayal of women.
Perhaps one of the most symbolic, while not injurious, incidents occurred in May of 2022. A young woman was on the NYC subway. A deranged young man enters her car and sits next to her. She and others attempt to stand and move away. Before she can escape he grabs her by the hair and slams her back onto the bench next to him [16]. We can see this all because, for some reason, someone was already filming in the subway when the man entered the car. Eventually the man dragged her to the back of the car and then released her without assault. But as she sat with the man holding her down by the hair, her head pivoted. She looked into the camera phone filming her and softly mouthed the words, “Someone please help me. Please help me” But no one did. Hear it again:
Someone please help me?
Someone please help her.
Someone please help all of us.
REFERENCES
[1] Resendiz, Eric, “She didn’t deserve this: Loved ones mourn woman, 66, killed in random San Dimas park attack”, March 26, 2021, https://abc7.com/san-dimas-stabbing-lone-hill-park-attack-homicide-investigation/10451420/
[2] deLeon, Kristine, “Woman fatally stabbed while walking her dog in Riverside; suspect arrested”, April 3, 2021, https://ktla.com/news/local-news/woman-walking-her-dog-fatally-stabbed-in-riverside-police/
[3] “Woman Dies After Subway Stair Shove, Suspect Still on the Loose”, July 28, 2021, https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/woman-dies-after-subway-stair-shove-suspect-still-on-the-loose/3182247/#:~:text=A%2058%2Dyear%2Dold%20woman,assault%20on%20Than%20Wtwe%20Than.
[4] Solis, Nathan, “Employee stabbed to death at Hancock Park furniture store”, January 14, 2022, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-14/employee-stabbed-to-death-at-hancock-park-furniture-store
[5] Yam, Kimmy, “NYC subway station death of Michelle Go leaves Asian Americans reeling”, January 19, 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/nyc-subway-station-death-michelle-go-leaves-asian-americans-reeling-rcna12650
[6] “Nurse Attacked Near Union Station Dies in Hospital She Served at For 38 Years”, January 16, 2022, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/nurse-attacked-near-union-station-in-downtown-l-a-area-dies/2798643/
[7] Bradford, Chris, “SICK STRANGLER Horror moment Florida man strangles woman with SHOELACE in random bus stop attack before she’s saved by Good Samaritan”, The U.S. Sun, January 6, 2022, https://www.the-sun.com/news/4405618/man-strangles-woman-shoelace-random-attack-bus-stop-florida/
[8] “Video shows man attacking woman with baseball bat in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood”, February 8, 2022, https://www.fox5ny.com/news/video-shows-man-attacking-woman-with-baseball-bat-in-seattles-belltown-neighborhood?taid=620362f2ce4f3700014985e5&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=twitter
[9] Burke, Minyvvonne, “Woman beat with a hammer in NYC subway attack, police say”, February 25, 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/woman-beat-hammer-nyc-subway-attack-police-say-rcna17702
[10] “Christina Yuna Lee was stabbed more than 40 times by homeless man, prosecutor says”, February 15, 2022, https://www.fox5ny.com/news/christina-yuna-lee-was-stabbed-more-than-40-times-in-lower-east-side-murder
[11] Stallworth, Leo, “Kim Glass, former Olympic volleyball player, says she was attacked by homeless man in LA”, July 11, 2022, https://abc7.com/kim-glass-olympian-attacked-downtown-los-angeles/12042519/
[12] “Brutal Attack on Woman at JFK Train Station in Queens Caught on Camera”, September 28, 2022, https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/brutal-attack-on-woman-at-jfk-train-station-in-queens-caught-on-camera/3883861/#:~:text=20.-,Elizabeth%20Gomes%20was%20at%20the%20Howard%20Beach%2FJFK%20Airport%20train,mercilessly%20punching%20and%20kicking%20her.
[13] Reid, Alecia, McNicholas, Tim, “EMS Lt. Alison Russo stabbed to death in “barbaric and completely unprovoked” attack in Queens”, September 30, 2022, https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/fdny-member-stabbed-to-death-in-queens/
[14] “Woman Attacked From Behind With Fire Extinguisher on West LA Sidewalk”, October 4, 2022, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/woman-fire-extinguisher-attack-west-la-lapd/2998165/
[15] Barcella, Laura, “71-Year-Old Calif. Postal Worker Is Stabbed to Death While Walking Home: ‘Sweetest Woman Ever’”, January 16, 2023, https://people.com/crime/71-year-old-calif-postal-worker-stabbed-death-walking-home/
[16] Sen, Sumanti, “NYC subway HORROR: Video shows woman BEGGING for help as man assaults her and everyone watches”, May 28, 2022, https://meaww.com/shocking-video-shows-woman-on-nyc-subway-assaulted-by-thug-other-passengers-walk-away-or-watch