Woman attacked, about $20,000 stolen in Hollywood Hills home robbery, police say

A violent home invasion robbery inside a sprawling Hollywood Hills estate on Thursday left a woman in her 70s injured and a community on edge.

The Los Angeles Police Department said the incident was reported around 9 p.m. on the 8500 block of Lookout Mountain Avenue, when two suspects allegedly broke into a home.

The woman was attacked and injured by two suspects who fled the scene with about $20,000 and other items, according to police. 

Neighbors say a security camera image shows two robbers with their heads and faces covered entering the property on Thursday around 7:30 p.m. 

Kristen Stavola, a neighbor and executive director of the We Are Laurel Canyon Neighborhood Association, says she got the call from a neighbor who saw the men running out of the house.

"He went out there with a flashlight. I caught them on the hillside carrying items down, putting them in a car and they were pretty brazen and they kept doing it while he was flashing a light on them," Stavola said. 

Stavola says their Laurel Canyon Fire and Crime Patrol units showed up first and found the woman hurt. Neighbors say she had been hit on the head and choked. 

"The situation was probably people who worked on the property because they were too familiar with the property, I mean, that is a massive, sprawling estate and to know exactly where to enter her office," Stavola said. 

Neighbors described the woman as a kind and well-respected person in the community. 

The LAPD was on patrol in the neighborhood on Friday, but these residents are leaning on their private patrol as a critical layer of protection.  

"We have patrol and when they are not out looking for fires, making themselves known and keeping this from becoming a hotspot again," Stavola said. 

Neighbors said that the woman's husband died in a house fire in a different home on the street a few years ago and that she lived alone.