MLB Fan on Life Support After Post-Game Attack

Rafael Reyna's wife says she was on phone with him when man hit him outside Dodger Stadium
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 1, 2019 10:02 AM CDT
MLB Fan on Life Support After Post-Game Attack
In this Oct. 27, 2018, file photo, fans cheer from the top of Dodger Stadium during a World Series game with the Boston Red Sox.   (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

A 47-year-old dad of four who went out to enjoy a Major League Baseball game Friday night is now on life support after a post-game altercation in a parking lot. Christel Reyna tells CBS Los Angeles she was on the phone with her husband, Rafael Reyna, sometime past midnight as he made his way out of Dodger Stadium after the home team's loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks. As they chatted, she suddenly heard yelling, and then a sound. CBS describes it as a "thump," Deadspin says it sounded like the "crack of a bat." That sound was apparently her husband's head hitting the pavement: He'd been punched by another man and fallen to the ground, cops say. Christel Reyna says she could hear bystanders helping her husband on the other end of the line, with one of them noting he was bleeding.

Rafael Reyna was taken to County/USC Medical Center and placed on life support with a fractured skull, his wife says. Police say the suspect is a 20-something male who sped away in a white SUV, perhaps a Toyota 4Runner. Christel Reyna wants to know how an attack like this could have happened at the stadium, especially after a 2011 attack that left another man with permanent brain damage. "Is this how they treat their fans?" she says, per CBS News. A GoFundMe set up to help Reyna's family pay for his medical treatment has raised more than $9,000 as of Monday morning. In a statement, the Dodgers say the LAPD is investigating, and that the team is "cooperating fully." Police have so far made no arrests. (More Major League Baseball stories.)

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