A man was left in critical but stable condition, and his girlfriend's jewelry was forcibly stolen after a group of five to six young suspects attacked the couple outside a Culver City retail store on Sunday afternoon, according to police. The victim was with his girlfriend and their two young children at the time of the assault, which occurred around 4:39 p.m. in the 6000 block of Sepulveda Boulevard, the address of the Westfield Culver City mall.
Culver City police officers responded to calls about a group of juveniles assaulting someone, and arriving officers found the male victim suffering from severe injuries, according to a report from KTLA. Investigators say the same group of suspects assaulted a man moments after harassing patrons at the shopping center, then turned on his girlfriend, injuring her and forcibly taking her jewelry. The man was taken to a hospital in critical but stable condition, per Culver City police. At the same time, the female victim and the couple's two children were also taken to a hospital as a precaution.
Culver City police describe the suspects as five to six Black males believed to be between 16 and 20 years old. Police say the group was last seen fleeing toward the intersection of Slauson Avenue and Hannum Drive, and no arrests had been announced as of the KTLA report.
A Mall With a Troubled Recent History
Westfield Culver City is a sprawling, 1-million-square-foot enclosed shopping complex — formerly known as Fox Hills Mall — that houses more than 130 retail stores near the Interstate 405 corridor, according to Malls.com. Sunday's attack marks the latest in a string of violent incidents at or near the property in 2026. In February, a shooting in the mall's north parking lot near Macy's turned out to be an attempted robbery that police determined had turned deadly, as Hoodline reported in its coverage of that shooting.
The Sepulveda Boulevard corridor surrounding the mall has seen other group crimes involving young suspects. In April 2025, police detained four juvenile suspects after an attempted armed carjacking a few blocks away in the 6100 block of Sepulveda, in which a group encircled a driver and one youth brandished a handgun. And in August 2025, two suspects were arrested on attempted murder charges after a woman was shot during an attempted robbery of her electric bicycle in the 4000 block of the same street, according to Culver City Crossroads.
Investigators Trace Fleeing Suspects Toward Slauson Avenue
Notably, the suspects in Sunday's attack fled toward the intersection of Slauson Avenue and Hannum Drive — the same intersection where Culver City police made an arrest in May after an unprovoked stabbing, an incident Hoodline covered in its report on the Sepulveda stop stabbing. Culver City police have previously relied on Automated License Plate Reader technology to track suspects fleeing along city corridors, a tool used during a violent crime spree investigation on Sepulveda Boulevard in June.
Culver City Police Department Investigations Lieutenant Ryan Thompson is asking witnesses and anyone with information about Sunday's attack to contact investigators. Thompson can be reached at [email protected], and CCPD Investigations can be contacted at (310) 253-6302.
Rising Concerns Amid Overall Crime Declines
The attack comes even as Culver City's overall crime statistics have trended downward. Citywide crime fell 9.7% in 2024 and dropped another 6.1% through the third quarter of 2025 compared to the prior year, according to crime data reported by the Los Angeles Times. Yet that same data showed violent crime ticking upward through 2025, a trend that Sunday's mall attack and the mall's recent history of robbery-related violence would seem to underscore.
Legal experts note that any suspects eventually identified and charged could face significant exposure under California law. Assault causing force likely to produce great bodily injury under Penal Code Section 245(a)(4) is a wobbler offense that can be charged as a felony carrying two to four years in state prison, according to a legal explainer from DCD Law. Separately, second-degree robbery under Penal Code Section 211 carries up to five years in state prison, and a great bodily injury enhancement under Penal Code Section 12022.7 can add three to six additional consecutive years to a felony sentence, per an outline published by Power Trial Lawyers. No suspects have been named or arrested as of this report, and it remains unknown whether investigators suspect any connection between Sunday's attack and the prior juvenile group robberies along the same commercial strip.
