A California dad was enjoying a rare moment of peace in a jacuzzi when two young thugs allegedly crept up behind him, kicked him viciously in the head and laughed as they ran off with his $1,000 iPhone.
Greg Medina, 48, was trying to relax his muscles after a long day as a chef when the apparently unprovoked attack unfolded Friday night at the Creekside Village apartments in San Bernardino.
Medina had recently gone back to school and was listening to a class lecture through his earbuds while soaking in the jacuzzi.
Then one of the suspects suddenly struck.
“I was listening to the class in earbuds and normally I don’t do that, but this day I decided to, and felt a sharp kick behind my head,” Medina told The California Post.
Surveillance video captured the shocking assault.
One suspect approaches Medina and delivers a hard kick to the back of his head.
The second then reaches down and grabs Medina’s phone, which was sitting on the concrete.
The attackers did not say anything to him, Medina said, instead they laughed.
“They thought it was funny to do this to me.”
Medina said the pair laughed again as they ran away.
The stolen phone was a particularly painful loss. Medina had spent more than $1,000 on the new iPhone and had just finished paying it off.
His AirPods were also lost and his glasses were broken during the attack but Medina said the assault could have ended in tragedy.
“I could have lost consciousness, you know, or I could have been hurt a lot worse and drowned,” he said.
The 48-year-old father managed to track his stolen phone to a neighboring apartment complex and contacted police.
Medina believes the suspects are not residents of his complex and live at the nearby property.
“They hop the wall and come into our apartment complex. We have a pool.”
Police could not pinpoint the exact apartment because the neighboring complex has roughly 30 to 40 units.
Medina canceled service to the stolen phone.
The brutal attack landed him in the emergency room with a concussion and later a diagnosis of “post concussion syndrome.”
But Medina said he could afford to take just one day off work.
He is a full-time chef, a full-time dad and the sole provider for his 12-year-old daughter. He works for Lutheran Social Services, preparing meals for homeless people in San Bernardino. His workday starts at 5 a.m., when he begins cooking for the roughly 70 to 75 men he typically serves before wrapping up around 1 or 2 p.m.
After putting in those grueling hours, Medina said the jacuzzi was supposed to be his chance to finally kick back and decompress.
Instead, he ended up concussed, battered and robbed.
“This was a pure act of violence. A pure act of evil.”
Medina said he never got a good look at his attackers but believes they were teenagers or young adults.
Now he hopes someone recognizes the pair and helps police track them down — before they turn their violence on someone even more vulnerable.
“If they’re willing to do that to me, as a 48-year-old grown man, what are they going to do with a senior citizen that’s in there?” he asked. “What are they going to do with someone that’s in a wheelchair?”
San Bernardino police are investigating. The suspects could face felony charges for assault with a deadly weapon and robbery.
Medina also said he cannot determine whether race played a role in the attack.
“If it was racially motivated, I don’t know. I can’t say.”
But the father said the adults responsible for the young suspects need to take a hard look in the mirror.
“As a parent, it’s our responsibility to teach our children,” he said. “The parents of these young men should be held accountable as well. The buck stops with us as parents.”
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