<snip>
Suddenly, the truck roared into an alley connecting Queens and Keelson lanes. Three men jumped out and began pummeling Beatriz’s husband, Jose, who was standing outside with friends. As she talked to the dispatcher, Beatriz began screaming: They had pulled a knife. They sported white-supremacist tattoos—swastikas, life runes, SS-style lightning bolts—and shaved heads. Skinheads.
“Motherfucking Mexicans!” one yelled, while a woman inside the truck shouted, “Stab him! Stab him!” Another stabbed Jose three times in the chest, and the three men began kicking and punching him once he slumped to the ground. Beatriz was hysterical; she had stopped making sense to the dispatcher.
A squad car arrived at the scene within two minutes. But the residents of Oak View had already taken justice into their own hands. The moment the three white supremacists attacked Jose, Johnny ran to his apartment, where friends and family relaxed. “Jose is getting jumped!” he hollered. They rushed out and poured into the alley. Others heard the commotion and rushed the skinheads. No weapons were needed for this, a good, old-fashioned ass-whuppin’.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Punches and kicks and body slams and scratches. The skinheads tried to cram themselves back into the truck, but two didn’t make it. Another did, but some of Johnny’s friends pulled the attacker out of the window and thrashed him anew. Sirens wailed in the distance, but the skins somehow broke free and sped off into the night.
Patrolmen stopped the truck about 10 minutes later, two miles from the crime scene, at the corner of Golden West Street and Little Harbor Drive. Jose was taken to UC Irvine Medical Center to treat his wounds, but the skinheads were nearly as badly injured. One had a dislocated shoulder; another, a black eye. All had cuts, bruises and torn T-shirts.
<snip>
The Mexicans who had beaten them up? Surf City’s finest didn’t give any of the Oak View residents so much as a warning over the incident.
Hicks, Hanson and Powell now languish in Orange County Central Jail, while Brooks is free on $100,000 bail. All face felony counts of attempted murder and hate-crime enhancements; each faces at least a decade in prison if found guilty of the latter count. The four maintain their innocence against the charges, but they don’t deny they assaulted Jose that Fourth of July weekend. Instead, their lawyers and supporters are trying to portray the quartet as the victims. Furthermore, their lawyers are trying to convince a judge that their clients deserve a plea bargain once offered by the district attorney’s office—offered before evidence emerged suggesting that the assault on Jose wasn’t a random fight but a brutal, premeditated crime.
(A lot more at this link:
http://www.ocweekly.com/2009-11-26/news/slater-slums-smackdown-huntington-beach-oak-view-barrio/1I'm glad the plea deal wasn't accepted, and I wonder why it was considered given the records of those idiots. I hope they throw the book at them.
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