San Diego police are on the lookout for two women they say attacked a grandmother just across the street from her own home in Mira Mesa.
The thieves stole the necklace she was wearing and then drove away, according to investigators, but the impact the crime has had on the neighborhood might stick around for a while.
Take a stroll down Kenova Street and you’ll notice the postcard holiday images you might expect this time of year. The jolliness is a stark contrast from the attack captured by a doorbell security camera.
The scuffle lasts less than a minute. The thieves roughed the elderly woman up with her necklace. She was injured but not seriously, according to police. And it happened around at around 4 p.m. before the sun went down.
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Kenova Street is in an older neighborhood and many of the residents have lived there since the 90s, but in all that time no one can recollect an incident like this.
"It's quiet over here," Noel Donato said. "I didn’t see any trouble or anything around here."
"I will double-check everything," another neighbor said. "I don’t trust anyone now.”
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"I am just shocked. I never heard anything about this," Claudia Mills said.
"That’s pretty brazen," Tanya Overman said. "Like, it’s pretty crazy to me that they were that ballsy, I guess would be the right word."
Overman, one of the long-time residents on the block, and who is of Filipino descent, fears the attack may have been targeted because of the cultural makeup of the neighborhood.
"It is predominantly Southeast Asian. Filipino, Chinese, Vietnamese are very predominating in this neighborhood but I am hoping it’s not a hate crime.," she said.
So far, San Diego police are calling the case theft and elder abuse, not a hate crime.
The victim described the getaway vbehicle as a small blue mini SUV, maybe a Kia.
Even though the crime happened in the middle of the afternoon, neighbors say they didn’t see or hear anything. So far there have been no reports that the thieves have returned to the neighborhood.