MANASSAS, Va. -
Police in Manassas are keeping an eye out for four young men who attacked an older man selling ice cream on a neighborhood street.
The victim is just out of the hospital and nursing some nasty wounds: a bloodied eye, six stitches in his nose and a cut-up elbow.
He was attacked and beaten while selling frozen fruit bars from his tiny cart on Taney Road Tuesday afternoon.
"One subject punched me in the face," the man tells us at the scene of the crime. We agreed not to reveal his name. "When I fell, the other subjects started kicking me in the face. I yelled and several bystanders came to my aid."
The victim is 59 years old originally from Mexico. He has been selling ice cream for years in that neighborhood and had just set up his cart when he was assaulted.
"I really can't tell you why they did it," he says through a translator. "I only sold five ice creams. I had $10 in my pocket and change in my left pocket. I don't know why they did this. I've never had any problems in Mexico. I don't think I deserved this."
Janet Obando lives a few doors down from where the ice cream man was mugged.
"I saw the four men," she tells us, also through a translator. "They were running. So I went to see what was happening and I saw the man. He was bleeding a lot."
"It was a brutal attack," says Manassas Police Lt. Eddie Rivera. "It was uncalled for. And they're a bunch of cowards for doing what they did."
Lt. Rivera says patrol officers are keeping a lookout for the four young suspects.
"We suspect it was a robbery," Rivera explains. "And the subjects were scared off because someone started screaming. A bystander started screaming and he started screaming. And people started coming out of their houses to help him."
The victim is not sure what he is going to do next.
"That's my job ever since I've been in Virginia, to sell ice cream," he says. "I would like to continue, but if I'm going to get assaulted again, I don't want to sell in this area."
Lt. Rivera says the descriptions of the four attackers are vague. Investigators are hoping somebody who knows the four teens will hear about the crime and give police a call.
