A trained and dedicated chef in Los Angeles who survived a gruesome and violent attack by a machete-wielding suspect, who had just killed another victim, is speaking out about the terrifying ordeal.
The violence unfolded in the early morning hours of June 1, with the Los Angeles Police Department responding to reports of an attack near11th Street and South Grand Avenue downtown.
At that scene, police located a victim suffering severe injuries from the attack. Only described as man in his 60’s, the victim was rushed to the hospital where he later died.
While detectives were on the scene investigating, reports of another machete attack, in the area of Broadway Street and Olympic Boulevard, came in. Police rushed to the second location and a man now identified as Kyle Levitt.
Levitt told KTLA’s Rick Chambers that he had been walking home from his job at a restaurant and was in the process of unlocking the building doors to his downtown L.A. apartment building when the attacker struck.
“By the time I looked up and saw the reflection in the door, I noticed a man running up behind me,” he explained. “I put my arms up to say stop and that’s when he hit me again.”
Levitt sustained multiple serious injuries to his head, requiring staples, a blow to his right wrist that nearly severed his hand.
“My tendons were cut completely down to the bone. My artery was cut, and he was over me at this point and that is the first time that I’d seen that he had the knife in his hand,” he said.
HIs attacker never spoke to him but had what Levitt described as “crazy eyes,” making him think the man was going to swing the machete at him again.
“For whatever reason, he didn’t,” he said. “He sort of stopped in that moment and registered, for whatever reason, that it was over and he ran away.”
Someone inside the apartment building heard Levitt’s banging on the door and came to his aid. He was rushed to the hospital where he has since undergone numerous surgeries to reconnect his tendons and save his hand.
He didn’t learn until later that just minutes before, less than a mile away, another man had been fatally attacked by the suspect.
“It was just this set of circumstances in which I was the lucky one,” Levitt said.
During an intensive downtown manhunt for the suspect, police located and arrested him. They also recovered the machete believed to be used in the two attacks.
So far, authorities have not released the identities of the suspect or the victim who was killed.
A GoFundMe has been organized to help support Levitt for the estimated monthslong recovery and physical therapy leaving him unable to work.
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