A woman opening an empanada shop in West Oakland was attacked Monday morning by a suspect who, according to the shop's owner, had entered and left while asking her for money. Police said a suspect was arrested in connection with the assault at Javi's Cooking, near 35th and Market streets.
The suspect allegedly waited in the restaurant's outdoor parklet before pushing the woman against a roll-up door, according to KTVU Fox 2. The station reported that surveillance video recorded the assault. Owner Javier Sandes said the suspect had asked the woman for cash shortly beforehand. The woman was taken to a hospital and released later Monday.
Owner Says Assault Is Part of a Pattern
Sandes told KTVU that he handles incidents at the shop every week in addition to running the business. He also said people experiencing homelessness had occupied the sidewalk outside the restaurant and that his property had been vandalized. According to his account, a man on a bicycle set fire to his Dodge Ram pickup truck in June, and a large-screen television was damaged that month.
Sandes said police had not been available quickly enough to address those problems and that earlier complaints to city officials did not produce results, according to the station. He said the woman appeared to have suffered more psychological than physical harm and remained frightened after the encounter.
What the public record shows
A separate Oakland precedent occurred on June 12, 2020, when businesses in the 4000 to 4800 blocks of Telegraph Avenue were vandalized during disruptive activity involving fires and property damage, according to ABC7 News, which quoted the Oakland Police Department. That incident was in a different part of Oakland, involved reports of a large group and was separate from the assault at Javi's Cooking near 35th and Market streets.
From Hayward to a Working Kitchen
Javi's Cooking makes its empanadas from scratch on site, producing them for both retail sale and wholesale orders. Sandes moved the restaurant from Hayward to Oakland in 2018 specifically because the West Oakland site offered walk-in coolers and a production kitchen his business needed to grow.
That production setup has kept the shop running even as Sandes describes an ongoing struggle with safety issues outside its doors. The attack on the woman is the latest incident he has flagged in a stretch of problems he says stretches back months, according to the same KTVU report.
