Homeless man describes beating

Keith Paul

Friday, April 27, 2001 | 11:05 a.m.

Eric Resner stood in the Clark County jail Thursday, looking at a group of teens and trying to determine whether he recognized the faces before him as those who brutally beat him.

He knew some of the teens in the lineup were the same people who have admitted to and been charged with the April 1 beating death of Russell "Rusty" Frasher, a 50-year-old homeless man. The beating of Frasher occurred in a desert area near where Resner was beaten just hours before the attack on Frasher.

"I wanted to help, but I just couldn't say definitely they were the same kids," Resner said Thursday. "I want those kids off the street (who attacked me). They were a bad group of kids."

Resner was in University Medical Center recovering from punctured lungs, broken ribs, a broken collarbone and other injuries when he saw news accounts of Frasher's beating death. He called police and told them what happened to him.

Frasher was kicked, punched and hit with a shopping cart in a desert area -- where he camped nearly every night -- near Martin Luther King Boulevard and Alta Drive just after midnight on April 1, Metro Police said.

The account was similar to what Resner barely survived. That attack occurred about 8 p.m. March 31 by some apartments in the same area, according to reports.

Resner, a thin, gray-haired 46-year-old man, was homeless that week. He was working but, by his own admission, he blew his paycheck and had no money for a place to stay. He was alone and sitting with his back against a wall when he saw a group of teenagers walking toward him. One was holding a thin board, another a chair.

"They didn't look intimidating enough to make me nervous," he said. "One walked up to me and asked me about someone. He said some name. I knew what was about to happen. I knew I was going to get hit."

Then one of the other teens just said, "Let's just do it," Resner said.

The teens started kicking and punching Resner. He tried to fight them off, but the teens surrounded him. He felt his breath leave him, and he knew he was getting severely hurt.

Resner was able to break away from the teens and run. They did not follow him.

"If I hadn't of ran, I think they would have killed me," he said.

Resner is still recovering from his wounds, and scars from the beating mark his face and forehead. He said he hopes to return to work in about a week; he is staying with a friend in a downtown motel.

Metro Police suspect the four teens charged in Frasher's killing -- Rocky Arbaugh, Donald Jones and Edward Hayes, all 17, and Anthony Quickbear, 18 -- also attacked Resner.

The teens -- all high school students -- admitted in separate interviews with homicide detectives that they beat Frasher a little more than a week after the slaying. One also said the group beat a homeless man earlier that same night.

Frasher was also beaten on March 12 and told several other homeless people the teens responsible had beaten him in the past, Metro homicide Detective Roy Chandler wrote in a report.

On March 22 another homeless man, Stanley Smith, was beaten in the same area, and the suspect carries the same description as those who attacked Frasher on March 12, according to Chandler's report.

Violence against homeless people is not new to Las Vegas.

A 72-year-old homeless man, Arthur Cramer, was beaten on Dec. 27 by a group of kids in the area of A Street and Owens Avenue. He died in a rehabilitation hospital March 10. Police believe a different set of teens is responsible for that slaying, said Lt. Wayne Petersen of Metro's homicide unit. No arrests have been made in Cramer's slaying.

Chandler noted in his report, "These beatings, most of the time, go unreported because the homeless are afraid of retaliation or they want no involvement with the police."

Heather Guillen, a homeless advocate in Santa Clara, Calif., said society has become more aggressive toward homeless people in recent years.

"We seem to be getting angry as a society," said Guillen of End Homelessness Now. "Homeless people sitting on the street are getting yelled at and things thrown at them. There is a desire in communities to put them somewhere else."

Guillen said she has received angry phone calls and e-mails since she started a website dedicated to helping the homeless.

Quickbear's attorney, Kristina Wildeveld, said when she talked to her client in jail he expressed sorrow for what he had done to Frasher.

"He feels very remorseful about his role in this," said Wildeveld of the Special Public Defenders Office. "The kid sitting across from me didn't look mean."

Attorneys and parents of the teens could not be reached or declined to comment for this story. All of the teens declined to be interviewed for this story.

Resner said he had no idea why a group of teens would beat him or any other homeless person.

"I guess Las Vegas has changed," he said. "The whole country has changed. It's everywhere."