Three witnesses told police that they watched as a 58-year-old homeless man repeatedly punched another homeless man in the face, smashed his head into the pavement several times and then kicked the victim in Aala Park earlier this month, according to a police affidavit.
Ronald Page was charged Friday with second-degree murder in the beating death of Lynn Riley, 49. Page is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail.
The brutal assault occurred around 4:25 p.m. Oct. 1. Riley was taken to the Queen’s Medical Center, where he died nine days later.
The Medical Examiner’s office performed an autopsy and determined the cause of death to be "intracranial hemorrhage due to assaultive blunt force trauma to the head" and ruled it to be a homicide.
Police arrested Page on Thursday at Tripler Army Medical Center but did not say why he was at Tripler.
Three witnesses said they saw Page and Riley fighting at Aala Park.
During the fight, Page ended up on top of Riley and punched him "in the face about 10 times, causing him to bleed from the forehead area," one witness told police, according to a court document filed in District Court on Monday.
Another witness told police that Page grabbed the victim "by the hair and smashed Riley’s head into the pavement on at least two occasions," the statement said.
A third witness said Riley was "bleeding from the right side of his head" when the ambulance arrived.
Page was on probation following a felony conviction in 2011 for second-degree assault, for which he was sentenced to 140 days in jail. Also, Page has several misdemeanor convictions for terroristic threatening and third-degree assault dating back to 2003.
