LAPD officials are investigating a possible hate crime after the discovery of a blood trail and swastikas drawn in what appears to be blood near the Museum of the Holocaust in Fairfax Monday morning.
The blood was found about 6:40 a.m. inside a bathroom at Pan Pacific Park, along the 100 block of North Gardner Street, Los Angeles Police Officer Tony Im told KTLA.
Various symbols, including swastikas, were found drawn in blood next to the playground on a cement wall, aerial video from Sky5 showed.
Elizabeth Raffels, who works for the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, found the blood Monday morning.
“I saw the pool of blood in the restroom and it was awful” she told KTLA. “It was so much blood.”
Bloodied footprints could be seen near the bathroom at the park and led south toward a 7-Eleven in the area and east a couple of blocks to a Coffee Bean on Third Street and Martel Avenue. Red shoes were also left at the scene, aerial video showed.
Bloodhounds were brought in to try and find a possible victim, but no one was located. Surveillance video captured a man who might have been involved, but no description was available.
LAPD Detective Meghan Aguilar said investigators are looking into the possibility that a person injured themselves.
“We don’t believe this is necessarily a crime, like this person is a victim,” Aguilar said. “Perhaps they were injured, self-inflicted or accidentally injured. This is an area where we do have some homeless people that will come and sleep overnight so we’re obviously talking to that group to try and identify who’s injured or what happened.”
No further details about the incident have been released.
KTLA’s Jennifer Thang contributed to this story.