Woman Sentenced to 15 Years for Attacking Elderly Man With a Brick in California

The woman, Laquisha Jones, 30, had pleaded no contest to elder abuse last year and acknowledged using a brick to injure the man, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said Thursday.

The case drew widespread attention after the man, Rodolfo Rodriguez, now 92, was left bloodied, bruised and bewildered on the sidewalk in Willowbrook, an unincorporated area of the county about 15 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, while going for a walk on the evening of July 4.

He told CNN last year that he passed a woman and a child on his walk, and without warning, the woman began hitting him with a concrete brick. He also said a group of men came over and began kicking him on the ground after the woman told them that he had tried to take away her daughter.

“But that’s not true,” Rodriguez said, according to CNN, adding that he had not bumped into the child.

Prosecutors said Jones attacked Rodriguez “without provocation.”

A witness, Misbel Borjas, posted a video of the aftermath and told CNN she heard a female attacker saying, “Go back to your country. Go back to Mexico.” (She gave similar accounts to The Los Angeles Times and other news organizations.) In the video, Rodriguez can be seen sitting on the ground next to a red-stained sidewalk, his face covered in blood.

The district attorney’s office and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the case Friday, including about Borjas’ remarks and the reports of the group of men.

Erik Mendoza, Rodriguez’s grandson, told CNN last year that his grandfather had sustained a broken jaw, broken cheekbones, two broken ribs and bruises on his face, back and abdomen. He said Rodriguez traveled from Michoacán, Mexico, to visit family in California about twice a year and walked through the neighborhood every day.

Jones was originally charged with attempted murder in the case and faced up to 29 years in prison. In December, she pleaded no contest to elder abuse. She had previously been convicted of making criminal threats in 2017, the district attorney’s office said.

Jones was being held in a county jail facility, according to records. The Los Angeles County public defender’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Jones’ lawyer is a public defender.

On Thursday evening, Rodriguez, who had given interviews from bed after the attack, walked outside to greet reporters from KCAL9, a Los Angeles television station. Speaking in Spanish, he told them that he was “good and happy, thanks to God.”

He said he would have been satisfied if Jones had gotten a lesser sentence of only a few years in prison.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” he said through an interpreter. “We have to forgive each other because God forgives us.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.