A Portland doctor who was bloodied and struck unconscious by a metal bottle in an unprovoked attack on Friday is holding the city responsible, calling out the city’s leftist leaders for “defunding the police.”
Mary Costantino, an interventional radiologist, left a bar downtown around 10:30 pm with a friend when an attacker walked towards the two and chucked an aluminum bottle at her, striking her face and knocking her unconscious.
She was left with a black eye and a bloodied face, including a cut on her nose and a busted lip, according to photos taken shortly after the attack, which show the doctor looking dazed as she sits on the sidewalk next to a pool of blood.
The attack was captured on surveillance footage, which shows a hooded white man with a backpack and the aluminum water bottle crossing the street to chuck the bottle at Costantino, who crumples to the ground when she is hit. Her male companion stumbles when the bottle is thrown and starts to walk toward the attacker, who runs away.
PORTLAND, Oregon – Police are asking for the public’s help after an unknown suspect knocked a woman unconscious with a metal bottle in NW Portland.
Video shows Dr. Mary Costantino walking near a MAX train station when she was hit by a metal water bottle.
“I got hit and I fell… pic.twitter.com/bRT43gX5NK
— Denn Dunham (@DennD68) August 3, 2023
Costantino said her friend saved her from being attacked again.
“He said that the perpetrator … was still coming towards me,” she said. “And he turned around and really aggressively yelled at him and the guy ran away.”
Costantino said she believed she was going to die as she bled on the sidewalk.
“I thought we were still being sort of attacked some way and so I managed to call 911. I was very calm, but I was also very sure I was going to die,” she told Fox News. “In my head, I was like ‘I’m gonna try and just verbalize a report of what was happening so there’s some record of how I died.’”
The attack happened in downtown Portland near Southwest 17th Avenue and Southwest Yamhill Street.
Costantino said she had to wait more than 20 minutes for police to arrive, but she emphasized that the police were not to blame for the delay.
“I do not hold the police accountable for this at all — I hold our city accountable for defunding the police,” she said. “We don’t have enough police force to protect our citizens, and we did this to ourselves.”
“If we don’t have police officers to come to the side of somebody who is under attack, then we’re all on our own,” Costantino said.
She said that she has “100%” changed how she votes after seeing Portland become less and less safe.
In 2020 amid violent protests against police, Portland’s city council voted to slash the police department’s budget by $15 million. The city has gradually attempted to reinstate funding but with little results.
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Afterward, Portland’s police department started hemorrhaging officers. The city has hired more police since September when the city was short 100 cops, but the police department is still down about 80 officers.
The Portland Police Bureau confirmed the violent incident, with a spokesman saying the attack appears to be “unprovoked and brutal” according to the security camera footage.
The spokesman said officers were dispatched at 10:55 pm, about 20 minutes after Costantino says the attack happened, and they arrived on the scene eight minutes later, but by then, Costantino had already given up and started going home.
“Our goal is always to help as much as we can, as quickly as we can. But with our staffing being at historic lows, this has become a challenge for us,” Lieutenant Nathan Sheppard told Fox News.
“Our officers joined the Police Bureau to help people, and when they are unable, it takes a toll,” he said. “We’re continuing to hire, so there’s definitely hope, and things WILL get better.”
Sheppard also said that at the time of Costantino’s call, there were zero officers free to respond. Police were actively working on 26 other calls across Portland, and 52 calls were holding, he said.