The victim of a violent fight outside SoFi Stadium, who was seen on video getting tossed over a railing and falling some 10 feet to the ground, is speaking out.
A bystander captured video of the violent altercation on Nov. 20, after the L.A. Chargers played the Kansas City Chiefs.
“You don’t treat a human being like that, or are in your right mind to throw someone off a bridge,” the victim, Austin Willenbring, told KTLA’s John Fenoglio.
The 41-year-old Chargers fan from San Diego said he and his sister had just left the game and were walking across the pedestrian bridge to the parking lot.
“I don’t know how wide it is, maybe an eight-to-10-foot bridge, but that’s a lot of people to put in a little area after a game,” he said.
Willenbring said that all of a sudden the crowd became restless.
“I was holding onto my sister,” he said. “I felt us go right and from there, the gentleman grabbed me, and I tried to get away from him.”
The bystander video that went viral on social media doesn’t show how the chaos in the crowd got started, but it does show Willenbring scuffling or struggling to defend himself before he was thrown over the railing.
“I had four fractured ribs, two on each side, concussion, busted lip and just a lot of bruising in the chest area and hip area, things like that,” the 41-year-old said.
Willenbring’s sister chased after the man who tossed him over the railing, her cellphone camera rolling. You can hear the guy tell her that he was hit first.
“I never touched the guy, never saw him, never talked to him, and I know some say there was a drunken brawl. I’ve seen some stuff in the news,” Willenbring said. “There was no one drunk. I don’t believe he was drunk. I wasn’t drunk. I just know he freaked out because he said he got hit in the eye.”
Not long after the incident, law enforcement arrived, but Willenbring said his sister’s encounter with authorities didn’t go well.
“They told my sister that we would go to jail if I was to file a report that night,” Willenbring told KTLA.
According to Willenbring, it was the tense interaction with Inglewood police officers that made him wait until yesterday to file a report.
“I know Inglewood is going to do an adequate job doing an investigation,” Willenbring said. “I want justice done for what was done to me. And no one should have to go through what I went through and am still dealing with, with pain and doctor’s appointments and missing work. And all the stuff that comes with the type of injury that I suffered.”