When a wild animal attacks and someone, it’s news. When they attack someone who’s already in the process of attacking someone else, it’s news of the weird. When it’s people dressed up as wild animals, it’s a Night Owl story.
Just before midnight Friday, on South Market Street in San Jose, a car containing two people stopped in the middle of the road. The driver, a woman, was in an argument with her boyfriend and had had enough. She made clear her desires: “Get out,” she told him. She repeated herself, loudly. “Get out. Get out. Get out!”
He answered with a blow to her face, then more. A pedestrian on the street, Steven Rodriguez, was taking a smoke break outside of his hotel and decided to come to the woman’s aid. He and a friend hurried to the car, opened the door, and tried to get the assailant off of her. In the process, Rodriguez was attacked as well.
That’s when reinforcements arrived. Rodriguez and his friend were attending a convention at the hotel, Further Confusion or “FurCon”. It’s a subgenre con for people who enjoy anthropomorphized animal storytelling… whether through dressing up in mascot costumes, comic strips like Ursula Vernon’s Digger, or movies like Zootopia. And, while Rodriguez and his friend weren’t wearing the bulky mascot suits that have become popular at the convention, two of the reinforcements were.
When the policeman arrived on the scene, the assailant, later determined to be San Jose resident Demetri Hardnett, was being restrained by two people, one in a tiger outfit and one in a pink dinosaur costume, sitting on him.
Question of the night: What’s a memorably odd thing you’ve seen while walking around your neighborhood?
