Beating Victim Hoping Suspect ‘Is the Right Guy’

Marine Cpl. Rocky Hunter usually rode with his wife on her late-night newspaper deliveries--”just to keep her company,” he said Monday.

But the night of Dec. 11, Catherine Hunter, 23, rode alone.

“Just this night she got up and took off by herself,” recalled Hunter, a 24-year-old aircraft welder stationed at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. “I was fast asleep.”

A ringing phone woke Rocky Hunter early the next morning. The call was from a hospital: His wife had been brutally beaten while making her rounds, delivering stacks of newspapers to racks. With a fractured skull, a severely damaged eye and a broken jaw and arm, she was in critical condition.

Will See Suspect Today

Sunday morning, the phone at the Hunters’ Santa Ana residence rang with better news: A suspect had been captured.

“I’m hoping this is the right guy,” Catherine Hunter said Monday, her jaw still wired shut. “I haven’t seen him yet, but I’m supposed to do that tomorrow morning. I’ll tell you right now how I’m handling this: I’m doing excellent, as far as handling this. I’m not going to let this get me down.”

“My face hurts, but it don’t look bad,” she added, managing a burst of giggles. “It’s mandatory for me to do that . . . to keep being able to laugh.”

A 16-year-old El Toro youth, dressed in a black ski mask and black clothing and toting a toy gun and metal baseball bat, was arrested shortly after 3 a.m. Sunday near the scene of an attempted robbery at a doughnut shop. His appearance, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, matched that of Hunter’s assailant: He was wearing dark clothing and a black “pull-down” cap. Hunter was beaten with a metal object similar to a bat, Sheriff’s Lt. Dick Olson said.

The youth, whose name was not released because of his age, was questioned by detectives and then taken to Orange County Juvenile Hall on suspicion of attempted robbery and attempted murder.

Hunter, the mother of a 5-year-old daughter, Natalie, said Monday that investigators have instructed her not to discuss details of her assault or to talk about the man who attacked her about 1:45 a.m. outside a closed El Toro delicatessen.

‘Always Afraid of That Place’

She said she went alone that night because her husband “was tired, and Natalie was tired and you know it was supposed to be my job. And I hated him having to do two jobs. I’m an independent person.” Initially, detectives said they could not determine a motive for the attack. Hunter’s purse, with money inside, was found untouched on the front seat of her family’s idling pickup truck, parked at the curb with the lights on and door open. Recently, investigators have said they believe Hunter may have interrupted a burglary unknowingly.

“I was always afraid of that place because it was always dark,” she said Monday. “Just because of that it was real spooky. I was just always afraid of that place.”

Three employees of a nearby pizzeria, returning to the business after closing it, heard her screams for help and found her bleeding profusely on the sidewalk. They have said they saw no one--no cars or vehicles--in the area. They visited Hunter in the hospital, bringing her bouquets, and called her Monday about the arrest.

‘Want to Know Why’

“She still can’t hardly see out of the eye,” Rocky Hunter said Monday. “She was real glad to hear of the arrest, but she’s still not quite over it all yet.”

Hunter, who with her husband left their native West Virginia two years ago, faces more reconstructive surgery. Last Monday, she underwent an operation to repair her broken arm because, after a month in a cast, the bone had not healed properly.

“I’ll never take another night job. I’m already trying to clean my own house. I’m not doing very well,” she laughed, “but I’m trying.” Thankfully, she said, daughter “is holding up really, really well.”

“I was more worried about her than me,” the mother said. “I can walk on my own. I get a little dizzy. But that’s OK. I’m a strong woman and I am not about to let this thing drag me down in the gutter. I never thought something like this would happen to me. I don’t know why it happened. I want to know why.”