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A woman known for feeding the homeless each week in MacArthur Park was savagely attacked with a metal pipe while serving meals, leaving her with a shattered jaw and six teeth knocked out, according to a fundraiser created to help cover her mounting medical bills.
The GoFundMe page, organized by Catherine Schetina on behalf of longtime volunteer Eva Woods, says the violent attack happened during the group’s regular Sunday lunch service in the park in late February.
According to the post, the suspect approached Woods from behind without warning and struck her in the face with a metal pipe. “During our regular lunch service on Sunday, Feb. 22, a woman came through the park with a metal pipe. Without conversation, she came up behind Eva and hit her in the jaw,” the page states.
The Post reached out to both Woods and Schetina for additional comment about the attack but have not heard back.
Woods was rushed to the hospital and underwent surgery the following day. Doctors said both her upper and lower jaw had been broken in the assault, the GoFundMe page states. It also says that Wood’s jaw has been wired shut and she will require dental implants to replace the six teeth she lost in the attack.
Friends say Woods has spent the last six years running the MacArthur Project, a volunteer-run mutual aid effort that provides more than 700 meals each week to homeless people living in the park.
Volunteers serve food three times a week and regularly distribute hygiene kits, groceries, tents and other supplies.
“This woman, and this incident, are not representative of the culture of MacArthur Park and the community we serve there,” Schetina wrote. “She is not someone we’ve met in the past, and others in the park weren’t familiar with her. This was absolutely a bizarre one-off.”
But the attack unfolded in a park long tied to a relentless stream of emergency calls.
The California Post recently reported that areas such as Skid Row and MacArthur Park generate a staggering number of 911 calls as first responders grapple with the city’s spiraling homelessness and mental health crisis.
Roughly one-third of all calls to the Los Angeles Police Department, about 40 calls every hour, involve someone suffering a mental health crisis, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell told The Post.
Firefighters on the front lines say the numbers are just as staggering. Los Angeles Fire Department Station 11, which serves the MacArthur Park area, responded to 8,568 ambulance runs in the first eight months of 2025, compared with just 55 structure fires, making it one of the busiest firehouses in the country.
“I am healing and will be back in the park as soon as physically possible,” Woods wrote on Instagram, thanking donors after the fundraiser quickly surpassed its initial goal. “Being able to heal without worrying about money is a gift I can’t even describe.”
The fundraiser has raised roughly $39,000, which organizers say will help cover the estimated $30,000 cost of dental implants and related medical care.
English (US)