Police Seek Public’s Help in Searching for Attacker

A 19-year-old woman beaten savagely in her Huntington Beach apartment remained in critical condition Sunday as police searched for her attacker.

Buffie Louise Hoose, who neighbors said moved to the city from Florida about 3 months ago, was listed in critical condition with a fractured skull at Humana Hospital Westminster. Her family gathered in the intensive care unit’s waiting room.

Hoose was attacked at 4:30 a.m. Saturday in her bedroom in the 600 block of 14th Street, Huntington Beach Police Sgt. William Peterson said. The case is under investigation as an attempted murder and burglary, he said.

“At this point we have nothing further to release,” Peterson said.

Police are looking for a man in his early 20s, with short hair combed back and wearing dark-colored sweat pants and a hooded, Kelly-green sweat shirt. He was described as about 5 feet, 10 inches to 6 feet tall and weighing 175 pounds.

The man struck Hoose on the head with an unidentified object. He was apparently frightened away when Hoose’s landlady was awakened by noise and investigated, a neighbor said.

He ran past the landlady and out the front door, according to the neighbor, who asked that her name be withheld.

She said Hoose had recently rented a room on the first floor of the two-story duplex from a couple who live there with their two daughters. The landlady told her there was no evidence of a break-in, she added.

The neighbor said it was odd that the couple’s dogs never barked before the landlady woke up to the sounds of a struggle from Hoose’s bedroom.

The attack left neighbors fearful, she said. “You hope there’s not a psychopathic killer loose out there,” she said.

Fliers Circulated

Police declined to speculate about whether Hoose might have known her assailant.

A neighbor who lives across the street from Hoose said young people often visit the tan-colored, stucco building half a mile from the beach.

A surfboard lying on the dining room floor could be seen through a window Sunday. Police sealed the windows and doors of the flat and a garage behind the complex with tape.

Fliers with Hoose’s photograph and a composite sketch of the suspect were circulated in the neighborhood Saturday and Sunday.

Anyone with information on the case is asked to call police at (714) 969-2272.