Mary Klein wanted to get in 3,000 more steps. It was around 10:30 p.m.
, and the longtime Venice resident and sculptor — who had just finished up at work caring for an elderly couple — hadn’t reached her daily goal of 10,000. She headed to the canals, parked along Strongs Drive and started to walk. But soon after, she said, she felt someone’s presence behind her.
Then everything went black. About an hour later, another woman was attacked a few hundred feet away. Police say Anthony Francisco Jones, 29, committed both assaults.
He was arrested in San Diego days later. That night of violence — with its brutality and seeming lack of a motive — has shaken the community. Many had always felt the tourist destination with multimillion-dollar homes perched along the waterways was safe, even when walking alone at night.
But even though violent crime in Venice is down, the fact that police say the suspect is a transient man has heightened years of debate about the neighborhood’s problems with its unhoused population. Court documents reviewed by The Times reveal the disturbing details of the night of April 6. Surveillance video from a home in the 2700 block of Strongs Drive captured the assault on Klein.
The video — which prosecutors described in a document requesting that Jones be held without bail — shows a man dragging Klein’s body to the gate of a house. He was wearing a light-colored jacket, Nike shoes and a polo shirt. The man is then seen in the video sexually a.
