Posted on 11/04/2006 2:27:06 PM PST by Yaelle
Victims of attack share their story Crime: 10 arrested after attack on Halloween; $2,500 reward offered for information about other suspects still at large. By Tracy Manzer, Staff writer Article Launched:11/03/2006 10:52:39 PM PST
LONG BEACH - Several suspects including at least three men who savagely beat three young women in a horrific hate crime attack Halloween night remained at large Friday.
The three victims - two of whom are 19 and the third 21 - agreed to sit down with a Press-Telegram reporter and discuss the painful attack in the hope that someone who knows the culprits will turn them in to police.
The young women asked to be identified by only their first names of Laura, Michelle and Lauren because they and their families fear for their safety. The assault, they said, was so savage they thank God they are alive.
`A pack of hyenas'
The victims - along with throngs of other people - had gone to the 3800 block of Linden Avenue around 9:30 p.m. for a popular Halloween block party. As they walked up to an elaborate haunted house, they said, a group of about a dozen males began taunting them.
"They asked us, `Are you down with it?,' we had no idea what that meant so we didn't say anything and just walked by them up to the haunted house," said Laura, "They were grabbing their crotches - we didn't know if it was a gang thing or what."
After making their way through a maze at the house, the Advertisement three girls said they were back in the same spot where they were confronted and next to the same guys, who again taunted them. Still saying nothing, the three victims tried to walk away but were pelted with lemons and small pumpkins that split the seams on their costumes and left lumps and bruises on their bodies.
The taunts and jeers grew more aggressive, the victims recalled, as did the size of the crowd. Now females joined in, and everyone began saying "We hate white people, f--- whites!"
At this point, the girls began to run, but the pack of assailants ran ahead of them and kept them surrounded.
"It was like animals, like a pack of hyenas," Michelle said.
She was trying to call 911 on her cell phone when the taunts began, but kept getting busy signals. She tried three times to call, she said, but never got through to an operator.
The suspects also began to gradually separate the girls, first by grabbing Laura by her long hair and yanking her backward.
She said she tried to fight off a group of girls who surrounded her and were clawing and hitting her, but then a man came up and slammed her in the head with a skateboard, knocking her unconscious.
"One of the witnesses told the police that he saw my legs go straight up in the air and I hit the ground face first," she said, accounting for the bumps and bruises on her forehead and around her nose and eyes.
Her friends watched, horrified as the man raised the skateboard over his head and slammed her again as she lay on the ground. Others in the pack also began to hit and kick her motionless body.
Fearing their friend would be killed, the other two girls rushed to her aid.
Saved by a Samaritan
Lauren was the first at Laura's side, and a group of people immediately jumped on her and began punching her in the face and back of the head simultaneously. Some kicked her in the back of knees, causing her legs to buckle. At one point, when they got her cell phone away from her, Lauren said she knelt down to try and retrieve the phone.
"Once I knelt down, there was too much of a force on top of me to get back up," she said. "They were pounding on my back, on my head. ... They were kicking at the ball that was me."
Lauren suffered 12 fractures in her face, including four to her eye socket, three to her nose and three to her cheek.
Doctors don't yet know if she will regain all of her eyesight. Until the swelling goes down, they won't know if she'll require surgery to repair the many broken bones.
Forced to drop her college photography classes this semester because she cannot see well enough to use the camera, Lauren also can't blow her nose or sleep lying down. The pressure, doctors told her, could cause any of the fractured bones to shift, which could lead to her eye becoming detached from the shattered socket.
Michelle said she saw the group drag Lauren down as she rushed up and knocked the man with the skateboard off Laura. But then he then turned on her, punching her in both sides of her face and in the ribs.
Her face, like Lauren's and Laura's, is bruised and swollen. The lining that surrounds her lungs is also bruised.
As the man beat on Michelle, Laura regained consciousness and tried to pull him off her friend. But others in the pack immediately began to hammer at her again, she said.
She, like Lauren, suffered a concussion as well as multiple contusions. The lumps and marks on the back of her head and her back show where she was stomped, kicked and punched as she lay on the ground.
In all, the attack lasted about 10 minutes, and it ended only when a Good Samaritan driving by the melee stopped and physically blocked the battered girls bodies while yanking the assailants off the victims.
Maybe because he was also black, or because he was so tall and strong, the group broke up and scattered to several cars and fled, the victims said.
"If it wasn't for that guy, honestly, I don't think these two would be here today," Michelle said.
Shortly after the attack, police arrested 10 juveniles on a charge of felony hate crimes, including counts for assault with a deadly weapon, battery and robbery.
Some of the 10 youths - nine girls and one boy ranging in age from 12 to 17 - were found wearing the victim's earrings - which were ripped from their flesh - and had Lauren's cell phone.
Others still at large
The victims were able to identify all 10 but said there are several others who participated who remain at large. They estimated that at least 25 people took part in the attack, while witnesses who live on the block told police the crowd looked to have between 30 and 40 people.
"I heard these thumping sounds and all these people yelling "F--- whites, f--- whites!" said one resident who witnessed the attack.
She spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing the assailants might return to her neighborhood and attack her and other witnesses.
"I have such mixed feelings," she added. "I'm so ashamed that I didn't try to run out there and stop them, but it was terrifying."
"I've never seen anything like that in my life," she added. "I can't even describe it. I'm still terrified."
She said she called 911, along with several of her neighbors, and screamed frantically for help as a dispatcher tried to calm her down. North Division officers found the 10 youths not far from the scene of the crime in a grocery store parking lot.
One girl's mother said she doesn't blame witnesses who were too frightened to intervene.
And she and the other mothers said over and over how grateful they are to the man who saved their daughters' lives.
"I can't imagine," Barbara said, her eyes shining with tears. "I can't imagine anyone doing that to another human being, or even an animal."
Now the mothers are working with police and imploring the district attorney's office to prosecute the youths as adults and to seek the harshest sentences possible. They have raised $2,500 for a reward fund so far, and are taking more donations in the hope it will spur someone to turn those responsible in to authorities.
Most of all, the girls and their mothers want the three men - who appeared to be in their early 20s - to be arrested.
A team of detectives have been assigned to the case, and the police response has the victims and their families confident that the men will soon be found.
Anyone with information about the suspects or the incident is urged to call police at the Youth Services Division, at (562) 570-1426, or Violent Crimes Division, at (562) 570-7250.
"Anything anyone can do, please help," said one of the mothers. "These people ... they don't belong in society."
Tracy Manzer can be reached at tracy.manzer@presstelegram.com or (562) 499-1261.
My sister was fit-to-be-tied...and the county prosecutor was in shock as well over the sentence... He did say however which was a shock to me, he stated..."...don't worry(sister's name) a person like this will mess up again within the six month probation period and then we'll have her..."
There was a lot said that did not make the video report, and my sister tried to have it submitted as a hate crime. but the court(not the prosecutor) decided against it...
So in other words, to subdue any racial acknowledgment, they swept it under the rug again...
They told her in a reprimand she was wrong to fight back the way she did...my niece. LOL...if you knew my sister, needless to say she had words with the administration over that I tell ya!
Gas jets are not even on your magna porting...send it back in and have 'em get it right!
My husband and I lived in Long Beach (east - Belmont Heights) for over 10 yrs from college days through 1980. We moved to Orange County (where I had gone to high school) and found it to be a more family oriented environment.
Bixby Knolls at that time had some very affluent neighborhoods, but you could drive two blocks and be in the midst of a ghetto - complete with gang grafitti, trash on the street. Generally as a woman, you knew not to go there. I had a friend back at that time who had to take the bus to her job and school. She was grabbed off the street by a group of young gangbanger types, taken to a vacant house and raped repeatedly. They left her in this house, her clothes were torn so badly and she was bleeding from facial wounds, but she ran outside toward a motel - the closest business on the street. The motel manager told her to get lost and refused to help her. She stumbled toward the street and a good samaritan stopped picked her up and drove her to the hospital.
She was white, her assailants were black.
She and her boyfriend moved to Coos Bay Oregon shortly after this incident.
No one was ever arrested for this crime.
In 5 minutes Obsession starts on FOX news... Get yer kids and watch it... hurry up!!
I grew up in Long Beach, went to grade school and high school there. Worked all over the SoCal area before I left CA in the early 70s. It deeply saddens me to see something like this happen in my hometown.
This person obviously never heard of Reginald Denny during the '92 L.A. Riots, when he was viciously attacted in a similar manner.
This is just how these folks do it in those neighborhoods. It's nothing new.
This is what happens when there is no punishment that these sub-humans have to fear, other than resort style "incarceration"
Sub-human animals, most likely on welfare!
I live in an unacceptable situation, but have no other options. I have severe asthma and can barely walk. I went broke and got sick at the same time a couple of years ago.
I live in the cheapest housing I could find in my normal neighborhood, a ghetto apartment. I am a prisoner here. When I go to pay my rent, I have to walk 3 blocks to take the check to the office and I can just barely make it - have to sit down a couple of times.
In every courtyard I pass, there are groups of black people always sitting out and they start catcalling me. I can't breathe, let alone speak. They take that as my being "stuck-up" and the men berate me and call me names. They do the same at the bus stops I have to go to because I had to sell my car.
I can't yell, I can't scream, I can't run away, I can't dirve away, I can't fight anyone off. When I walk to the drug store or grocery, there is a Katrina family living next door to me which never goes indoors. They yell things and send the teenagers over walking along shadowing me, just behind me.
The adult male who visits them has threatened me and tried to break my living room window. Cops were called and they have pretty much left me alone, not acting quite as aggressively. I have been told by the manager that they will be gone when their lease expires, before Christmas.
Before that, I had a rapist/burglar living 6 inches away, front door adjacent to front door - he went in and out every night between 2AM and 6 AM about 2 dozen times, always making it sound like my door was being broken into. I got him out after one of his cohorts smashed in his front window to break into his living room and it was never reported or fixed.
My house smells like fried grease 24/7 or BO. Opening a window to let in the fresh air seems foolish. I'm allergic to everything and can't buy meds or see a doctor for any of it. I never leave the house after dark and very seldom leave at all. I sleep in the daytime because the night sounds are so scary, so I stay up in case the sirens stop in front of my building. I do have a .38 but prefer not to use it.
It's hell being poor, sick, white and living around gangsta type blacks, I can tell you.
WHY should these victims of this hate crime have to IMPLORE the authorities to do the right thing?
You seem very well informed and aware of this situation. Like I have said before this has been going on for years and years. I have been called a racist and everything else for trying to bring this out but I could care less the facts speak for themselves.American leaders no longer have a backbone and we can not offer reparations in the form of human suffering and looking the other way.The only way to deal with a problem is up front and directly. Very few people that participate on this site have never heard of the Wichita Massacre or Jesse Dirhising and the MSM for the most part did not publish much or anything about them nationwide. The reason I bring these up they are etched in my memory.America has become so PC the terrorist are even using propaganda to defeat us.
black and block, not the same.
That's absurd!
There comes a point where you DO fight back.
She should have sued the crap out of the school district. Did she? I would. If that happened to my daughter and she was in a public school, I'd sue the hell out of em. I'd be worse than Natalie Holloway's mother in pursuing it. I'm sick and tired of this ****.
Hey, it costs money to move but maybe you could move to Graham County, NC or Erwin County, TN. Prices are not too high there. No shortage of White trash but there are a few Indians, very few Blacks and most of the people are nice. In those mountain places you would get some cleaner air and better scenery.
They won't be caught. Even if they are, they'll get (at most) a probated sentence. No jail time.
For you see, some crime victims don't count.
More than that, we are not permitted to say.
...And come back home safe and sound, you.
Everyone but the professional grievance elite understand this situation to be as violent and ugly as it was. It was godawful ugly and hateful.
That's the truth.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.