Ryan Sabalow - April 30, 2009

"Hidden behind his glasses and under the left side of Jeffrey Smerber’s baseball cap brim are a greenish-black bruise and a scabbed-over, inch-long cut next to his eye.

Painful and tender, Smerber’s left eye is now forced into a perpetual squint.

“It’s gotten better,” the 51-year-old homeless man said today after lunch outside Living Hope Compassion Ministries in Redding California.

Smerber’s injuries may be healing, but he’s still reeling from the beating he received on Saturday night, a week after Timothy Lee Alcorn, a 48-year-old homeless man was beaten so badly he later died.

Smerber’s injuries weren’t nearly as severe as Alcorn’s but Redding police are nonetheless taking the case seriously.

Sgt. Dean Stainberg said an investigator was assigned to the case after Smerber’s beating was reported earlier this week. An officer interviewed Smerber and took pictures of his wounds.

The investigation is continuing and no suspects have been arrested.

But just days after Alcorn’s death, police worry there may be a trend of violence toward the homeless.

“Two so close together, I don’t remember in all my years here that happening,” said Sgt. Bruce Bonner.“We hope this isn’t the start of something.”

Smerber says he was asleep outside on a discarded mattress Saturday night in south Redding when he was awakened by at least three people attacking him. One of them kicked him in the head.

“I had put my glasses in my hat, like I always do,” Smerber said.“My eyes are pretty bad.”

Smerber said he got up and tried to follow them, but he passed out mid-run, his head hurt so bad.

Smerber said that earlier Saturday, he’d gotten into a confrontation with three teens who had been standing on a train stopped in the area.

“They were throwing rocks at my friend,” he recounts.“I said,‘Don’t be throwing rocks at my friend, and get off that damn train.’”

He said it was dark and his eyes were too bad to determine whether the rock-throwing teens were the same assailants.

Police say it was three different teens who jumped Alcorn and bludgeoned him to death with a discarded table leg and two metal bars.

The Redding teens, John Hadley Thompson, 15, Albert Curtis Sanchez, 18, and Jared Cory Voss, 16, are charged with murder, robbery and kidnapping. Sanchez and Voss have pleaded not guilty and Thompson is scheduled to enter a plea on Friday.

Police say the teens plotted to rob and beat a homeless person on April 18 and picked Alcorn “because he would be an easy target.”

After hitting him around 15 times, knocking him bloody and unconscious, they dragged Alcorn under a bush and left him, police said.

His body was found two days later. The three teens were arrested Thursday, April 23, after tipsters called police.

On Sunday, Alcorn’s recent death fresh in their minds, workers at Living Hope Compassion Ministries in Redding were understandably frightened when Smerber arrived bruised and bloody himself."

READ MORE:
http://www.redding.com/news/2009/apr/30/an...beaten-redding/