Former Olympic volleyball player Kim Glass says she was attacked by a homeless man in Downtown Los Angeles this weekend and nearly lost her eye in the incident.

In a series of videos posted to her Instagram story, Glass said she was leaving lunch with a friend at a restaurant on Saturday (July 9), when the man ran up out of nowhere and threw a metal object — believed to be a pipe — at her.

“He just like looked at me with some pretty hateful eyes,” Glass said. “And, as I turned to go tell my friend, ‘I think something’s, like, wrong with him and I think he’s going to hit a car,’ before I knew it, a big metal bolt, like pipe, hit me right here.”

“It happened so fast,” the 37-year-old said. She mentioned that the object the man threw at her from several feet away slammed right into her eye socket and the bridge of her nose, causing serious damage.

In her videos, taken a day after the attack, you can see one of her eyes was swollen shut and her face was still bloodied. She said that she was diagnosed with multiple facial fractures and needed stitches to close the wounds.

Glass also said that the doctors do not expect her vision to be permanently affected by the incident. She added that she is grateful for all the support she’s received from friends and family since the incident and happy things didn’t turn out worse. “Just be safe out there,” she said in her videos. “There’s a lot of mentally ill people on these streets right now and you shouldn’t have to be fearful when you walk but it’s true. And, so, you guys just be safe.”

A group of bystanders came to her rescue until paramedics arrived, and others held down the man accused of throwing the object until police arrived to the scene.

Glass won a silver medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics on the U.S.A. women’s indoor volleyball team. She’s also done some modeling in her career, as she appeared in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.