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Homeless man stabbed a stranger to death in LA restaurant on New Year's Day

It happened Wednesday morning at a restaurant called Margarita’s Place in Los Angeles. You may never have heard of the restaurant but the location is somewhat famous because decades ago U2 shot their Where the Streets Have No Name video on the roof. According to police, a homeless man got into an argument with a stranger in the restaurant, then pulled out a knife and stabbed the victim, killing him. Then the attacker simply walked away:

Security video captured by a nearby business showed the suspect calmly walking away from the restaurant in broad daylight.

According to the owner of the restaurant, the suspect started going to the restaurant a couple weeks ago.

“He would just order food, and he would sit there quietly,” the owner said. “He wouldn’t talk to anyone. He didn’t show any type of aggression.”

NBC has identified the victim as a 56-year-old local man:

Homer Garcia, 56, and another man were at the counter when an argument erupted between them, police said. Restaurant manager Bernardo Vergara said he told them to leave, and that’s when the attacker used a knife he apparently carried with him to stab Garcia…

Detectives believe the killer is a local transient and the restaurant manager recalls seeing him here before…

At least one customer at the diner, which sits at the edge of Skid Row, said he’s saddened, but not surprised, at the violence that took place this morning during breakfast.

“I mean, that’s just the way it is. That’s what happens around here. You just have to try to make sure it doesn’t happen to you,” Michael, a customer, said.

As I wrote back in November, random attacks by homeless people are quite common in Los Angeles. In 2018 there were more than 2,700 arrests of homeless people for assault. The numbers for 2019 haven’t been released yet but as of October the figure was just shy of 2,500.

Obviously the murder is unusual but violence by the homeless is not. A significant percentage of the people living on the street have mental or substance abuse problems that make them unstable and unpredictable. These are not all people who just need cheaper rent, as many homeless activists prefer to emphasize.

Finally, it’s worth repeating that hundreds of homeless people die on the streets every year in Los Angeles. Last year 921 homeless people died. Their average age was 51 which tells you these are people dying relatively young. The homeless themselves are also often victims of violence. In New York, a homeless man was charged with killing four other homeless people in Chinatown last year. He beat them to death with a heavy metal pipe while they slept.

Here’s the CBS report on the murder. So far the police don’t have the man in custody but there is surveillance video from a nearby store showing him walking away.

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