A woman was stabbed to death on the Hollywood Walk of Fame after three homeless men demanded she pay one dollar for a picture that she took.
Christine Darlene Calderon was walking on the Walk of Fame with her co-worker when an amusing sign the homeless men were displaying caught her eye. She took a picture of the sign, in which the panhandlers were asking for money with four-letter insults and a smiley face, according to the L.A. Times. When one of the men noticed her taking the photo, he demanded she pay him a dollar for the snapshot. When Calderon refused, two of the men reportedly pinned her co-worker to the wall while the third attacked her.
When the 23-year-old got up to run away, blood was gushing from a stab wound in her midsection. She attempted to run from the scene but collapsed just a few feet away from the Walk of Fame location where the attack occurred. Citizens on the street attempted to stop the bleeding. Despite everyone's best efforts, Calderon was pronounced dead three hours later during emergency surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Police detained two men at the scene around midnight and arrested a third hours later on suspicion of murder. Police report the ages of the three men as being between 27 and 34-years-old and described them as "transients." They were able to track down the men by getting what they looked like from Calderon's snapshot.
One of the men is known to loiter in the area and the other two reportedly came from out of state. Since the incident the LAPD has stepped up their patrols in the area in an attempt to ensure people's safety and stop any event like this from happening again in the popular tourist location.
The L.A. Times also reports, Yolonde Tassin, Calderon's mother, said she knew something was wrong when her daughter stopped responding to text messages on Tuesday night. When detectives arrived at her door Wednesday morning she said "My daughter's dead isn't she?" to which one of the detectives gave a slight nod.
