El Toro : USA Today Carrier Assaulted on Route
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A 23-year-old USA Today newspaper carrier was struck on the head and critically injured as she stepped out of her delivery truck outside an El Toro delicatessen early Thursday.
In what authorities say was a brutal and puzzling attack, the Santa Ana woman suffered a fractured skull, broken jaw and severely damaged eye in the 1:45 a.m. assault. Sheriff’s Lt. Dick Olson said her assailant’s weapon was not known.
Investigators have not been able to determine a motive in the attack.
Olson said the victim did not appear to know her assailant and that her purse, with money inside, was found in her idling truck at the curb, where she was about to load newspapers into street racks.
The coinlike “slugs” used by carriers to open the racks were found scattered on the sidewalk around the victim, Olson said, adding that there was no indication that the woman was sexually assaulted.
She remained in critical condition Thursday in the intensive care unit of Mission Community Hospital in Mission Viejo, Olson said.
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