Reporter Witnesses Rampage : Riot Turns Attention Away From Surf Event

Times staff writer Sarah Smith was covering the Op Pro Surfing Championships on Sunday in Huntington Beach when the disturbance erupted. This is her eyewitness account.

Australian Mark Occhilupo was delighting spectators with his aggressive and colorful surfing in Sunday’s finals of the Op Pro Surfing Championships at the Huntington Beach pier when a roar arose from the beach behind the grandstand. It was just before 2 p.m. Sunday.

A young man ran into the surfing competitors’ area, shaking his head. Although police later gave a different account, the man said three girls had slipped off parts of their bathing suits in front of a crowd of men--and, when police approached to arrest the three, a fight had broken out.

I left the cordoned-off competitors’ area to see what was going on.

Quickly--as the surfing contest continued--the brawling swept south along the beach, and larger groups of people ran to confront the officers.

A police helicopter flew low over the beach in an attempt to discourage fighting among the beach-goers, which had produced a cloud of dirt and sand 30 feet high. But the helicopter seemed to incite more action. The bottom of its fuselage was hit by a number of thrown objects, including a beach umbrella and bottles, which forced it to ascend out of reach.

I was becoming scared, but I followed the crowd, which was moving back and forth in waves, down the beach toward the lifeguard headquarters. There the most violent spectacle erupted as young men surrounded the building, daring each other to destroy property.

‘This Is Crazy’

“This is crazy,” said Jim Loughridge, 18, of Newport Beach, standing in a planter. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

Emma Gardner, an 18-year old tourist from England, watched the scene from the beach, aghast. “This is sick,” she said. “It’s like they’re animals.”

The men smashed the windshields of three police cars and a four-wheel-drive rescue vehicle. They tore out engine parts and ripped off a bumper--hurling them through the windows of the lifeguard headquarters along with several lighted flares.

Two fire extinguishers were taken from the four-wheel-drive vehicle and turned on the crowd. Then the police cars were rolled over and set afire.

Paul Hanna, a 20-year-old beach maintenance worker, was inside the lifeguard headquarters, where he had taken refuge when the disturbance broke out.

“They started throwing rocks in the windows, and we didn’t know what was going to happen--if they were going to try to take the building or not,” he said. “That’s when they told us to evacuate.

“I think this is a shame. . . . It gives new meaning to the words, ‘Welcome to Huntington Beach. Now go home.’ ”

Bill McGinley, 19, was also inside the lifeguard headquarters at the peak of the riot, counting money from his shift as a parking attendant.

“I was right behind the windows, locking up the money, when they started throwing stuff through the windows,” McGinley said. “We all ducked. It scared the living daylights out of us.”

Became Target

A man beseeched the crowd in the parking lot of the lifeguard headquarters to calm itself, but he became the target of bottle-throwing. When he tried to deter two men from fighting and damaging the vehicles, one of them hit him in the head with a metal pipe.

Two Orange Coast College students were in tears as they tried to call the police from a restroom next to the headquarters.

“That man was trying to do good,” said Christina Vold, 18, of Huntington Beach, of the man who had been hit with the pipe. “He fell to the ground and he was knocked out and nobody would even help him up. It made me so sad.

“It’s like back in the days of the gladiators when people enjoyed seeing people torn up and things destroyed.”

Her friend, Becky Allen, a Los Angeles Rams cheerleader, added: “This is our city and these people come here and ruin it. Why are they doing this?”

“I can’t believe people are watching and cheering them on,” Vold said. “They’re so disrespectful, and innocent people are getting hurt because of it. It really makes me cry. I wish I could do something.”

Tried to Intervene

Allen said she and Vold tried to intervene when the youths began destroying the cars. “We stood there and yelled, ‘Why are you doing this? Stop it!’ ” Allen said. “And I thought they were going to come after us.”

By the time reinforcements for the Huntington Beach police arrived from police departments in neighboring cities, most of the damage was done. The crowd had been vandalizing cars and breaking windows for more than half an hour.

The police, wearing protective helmets and armed with night sticks, surveyed the situation for several minutes before forming a ring around the crowd. They marched north, shoving the crowd back toward the pier and off the beach.

In the midst of it all, a group of young skateboarders, who had thrilled the crowd for two days with feats of skill on a ramp two stories tall, were caught in the police net.

As they hesitated in attempts to retrieve their equipment, the teen-agers were pushed and swatted with night sticks.

The struggle continued about another 20 minutes. As the police herded the crowd toward Pacific Coast Highway, the beach was littered with belongings: towels, umbrellas, sunglasses, beach chairs.

Eventually, I found my way back to my car, parked a mile away. I joined the traffic jam of people going home from an ugly day at the beach.