City Benny the (Alleged) Rock Chucker
Remember Benny, the rock-balancing street artist that Fremont can’t decide whether to love or to hate?
Now a neighborhood resident named Andy Chapman is considering pressing charges after getting beaned in the skull (allegedly) by one of Benny’s stones.
It happened last Sunday, around 2 a.m., as Andy was walking home from the Red Door with some friends. “We saw some fratty dudes harrassing Benny across the street from the Ballroom,” Andy said. “And we said to them, ‘Yeah, real nice, making fund of the homeless guy.’ Then Benny flipped out on us—he was wasted and I don’t know if it was the fact that I called him homeless or what—and called us faggots and we said whatever and left.”
Then, according to Andy, Benny knocked over one of his statues and hucked a rock “the size of a baked potato” at Andy, who was around 15 feet away. “I saw it coming, I tried to duck out of the way, but I couldn’t,” he said. Andy wound up in the hospital, getting four staples in his scalp.
According to the police report, “the suspect” was arrested and also had to go to the hospital: “During the commotion someone shoved the suspect to the sidewalk causing him to hit his head… He was sent to the hospital for stitches.”
Andy, who regularly sees and says hello to Benny, says he wants to help the guy but he also wants to press charges. “I took a rock to the head,” he said. “I gotta try to make something positive out of it.”
As yet, Benny (who the police report lists as a “transient”) could not be reached for his version of events.
Smell homeless people who urinate on our public streets and threaten families and children should be in jail. I hope they lock him up for a long, long, time.