JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Tatyanna Brash\u2019s walk to work Thursday morning should have taken her less than five minutes. But she had hardly made it a block before she realized a woman she didn\u2019t recognize started following her.<\/p>\n
As she crossed East Duval Street in downtown Jacksonville to get to the library, where she\u2019s worked for the last two years, Brash said the woman lunged at her.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had, like, this manic, deranged look on her face. Her eyes were like stone,\u201d Brash said, \u201cShe came right at me and I just started fighting her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brash told Action News Jax she was traumatized by the attack and doesn\u2019t remember too much of what happened while she and the woman were fighting in the middle of the road. Brash said she tried waving at oncoming cars to ask for help and, eventually, an officer with the Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office ran up and pulled the woman away.<\/p>\n
Brash later had to get a splint on her hand because she got hurt in the fight.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI have children, I had just dropped my kids off at daycare, what\u2019s wrong with people?\u201d Brash said.<\/p>\n JSO arrested Kalee Harden for the attack, charging her with battery. We searched Duval County court records and found Harden has previously been charged in two domestic violence cases and two theft cases, among other past charges. JSO said she\u2019s experiencing homelessness.<\/p>\n We reported last year when Citizens\u2019 Insurance voted to move<\/a> its office out of downtown Jacksonville after dozens of workers filed complaints about harassment from others experiencing homelessness.<\/p>\n Brash believes safety in downtown is a problem and believes there needs to be a greater police presence to prevent similar attacks from happening.<\/p>\n \u201cDefinitely more patrol, I don\u2019t see anything wrong with bringing the horses back downtown,\u201d Brash said.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n We reached out to the city asking if any more is being done to keep downtown safer. In a statement, a representative from the city sent us this:<\/p>\n \u201cThe JFRD Providing Assistance To the Homeless team has connected with 2,127 individuals since it launched in November 2024. Many of these encounters have been in Downtown Jacksonville. One unfortunate incident does not negate the significant progress that has been made during this time. The City\u2019s strong partnership with JFRD and JSO will continue as we work together to reduce homelessness.\u201d<\/p>\n We also reached out to JSO asking if it will consider expanding its presence downtown. At this time, we have not received an answer to that question.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Tatyanna Brash\u2019s walk to work Thursday morning should have taken her less than five minutes.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[344,347,28,348,116,67558,351,118,67560,67559,67557,67556,117,349,350,346,345],"class_list":["post-138533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action-news-jax","tag-cbs47","tag-florida","tag-fox30","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-assault","tag-jacksonville-fl","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-homeless","tag-jacksonville-homeless-assault","tag-jacksonville-librarian-assaulted","tag-jacksonville-librarian-attacked","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-northeast-florida","tag-southeast-georgia","tag-wfox","tag-wjax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}