Lola Mendoza has visited her son, Jason Ríos, every day for more than a week in the hospital after the teenager was brutally attacked in Freedom Plaza in Watts south of Los Angeles.
Ríos and a friend were eating outside The Habit burger restaurant when three suspects arrived and attacked them from behind on Tuesday, May 14, according to a report from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
According to Mendoza, the suspects threw Riós to the ground and continued kicking him in the head where he began to bleed.
The young man is hospitalized.
“He grabbed the phone, dialed me and said mommy, come pick me up,” Mendoza said. “And I asked him what happened to him and he told me that they just hit him.”
The mother says that when she arrived, Ríos’ friend was no longer there and her son was bleeding from the head, he started vomiting and she immediately called 911 for the ambulance to take him to the hospital.
Ríos was treated at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital where they discovered that he had intracranial bleeding and was later transferred to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where he is hospitalized.
Mendoza said that the surgery as a young man lasted about six hours and he is currently in stable condition, but there is still a long process for him to recover.
“He’s still in shock,” Mendoza said. “She just stares, but she still can’t speak.”
Ríos’ family cannot believe what happened since they claim that the young man only leaves the house to go to school.
The teenager turned 15 on May 10, so his mother always tells him that it was like a Mother’s Day gift.
According to the GoFundMe page, the victim’s brother, Humberto Ríos, says that the young man is an excellent student who enjoys building computers, playing video games and that he did not deserve this.
“I’m here asking for justice,” Humberto said. “The funds will be used to obtain a lawyer to handle the attempted murder and cover my brother’s future therapy.”
Lack of security
Humberto added that he also plans to take legal action due to the lack of security in the Freedom Plaza in Watts where instances of violence often occur and assures that normally no one pays attention.
According to Mendoza, there is a lot of violence in the square and several people have already been beaten there.
“I don’t know where the security guards that the plaza supposedly has go because you never look at them when they are there,” Mendoza said. “So I want there to be more security in the square, more patrols and I want it so that it doesn’t happen to other children.”
Mendoza and his family have lived in the area for about two years and says it is important for the Latino community to support each other to protect themselves.
The mother added that it is sad that the children in the neighborhood are scared and she has noticed that they do not want to go out because of what happened.
“I tell all my friends and neighbors to take good care of their children, because I was always looking out for my child, but in the second he went to eat his life changed,” Mendoza said.
According to a statement from the LAPD, the day after the incident a suspect was identified and arrested for attempted murder.
Nayeli Ríos, Ríos’ sister, just graduated from college and Mendoza said that when she showed the video to her son, all she had was tears because she couldn’t be there to see her sister.
“I demand justice so that those people who are doing harm no longer harm other children and do not walk in the streets hitting people,” Mendoza said.
Detectives are currently working to arrest two other juvenile suspects involved in this incident.