2nd Trial Opens on Huntington Beach Riot

The second criminal trial stemming from a riot at Huntington Beach Pier last Labor Day weekend opened Friday in Orange County Superior Court with a 20-year-old defendant whom police identified from television tapes of the melee.

Robert M. Oates of Redondo Beach faces felony arson charges in connection with a well-publicized incident in which at least four youths shoved a three-wheel police motorcycle into a burning, overturned squad car.

Thirteen people were arrested at the scene of the riot and more than 40 were injured, including a dozen police officers.

In a videotaped television broadcast, the youths--wearing only swim trunks--were seen retreating from the burning police car, shouting with their arms raised.

Oates also faces misdemeanor charges of inciting and participating in a riot. The three charges carry a combined maximum prison term of three years.

Oates maintains that he is not recognizable in the videotape. When Judge Richard N. Parslow, Jr. viewed the tape Friday, he also said he could not identify Oates.

“My feeling is that the main value of the video is to show what happened, not to show who did (it),” the judge said.

The videotape, which the jurors saw Friday, shows the backs of several youths pushing the vehicle into the fire. In the edited version prepared by the district attorney’s office, the image also focuses on a man walking from the incident wearing a cap and blue shorts with his arms raised, obscuring his face.

Woman Informed Police

The jurors heard testimony Friday from Huntington Beach Police Detective Robert Christie, who described the riot that started at an Ocean Pacific Pro Surfing Championship, a program attended by more than 100,000.

Christie said that there were never more than 24 officers at the scene and that a crowd of several hundred people surrounded the lifeguard headquarters and began throwing bottles and steel pipes at the windows. The crowd also smashed windows on police vehicles with steel trash barrels, overturned some police cars and started fires with emergency flares.

Under questioning from Public Defender Dennis J. Sakai, Christie admitted that neither he nor other lawmen identified Oates at the scene.

Oates was identifed a day after the riot by a woman who told police that Oates had boasted of pushing the police vehicle into the fire.

Police then secretly photographed Oates at the beach and compared the photos with the news videotapes. Later, police obtained an arrest warrant for Oates, who had reportedly given his name to the woman who informed police.

The woman is scheduled to testify Monday about her conversation with Oates.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Marc Rozenberg said the woman also will testify that the cap Oates was wearing and his hairstyle match those of an individual shown in the videotape.

On Sept. 24, after learning of a warrant for his arrest, Oates turned himself in to police.

Other criminal trials are pending from the riot, including another involving identification through the same news videotape, Rozenberg said.

Sean Boles, 19, of Yucca Valley, the first to be tried, was sentenced last May to almost a year in jail on charges that he threw a bottle at a line of police officers.

Superior Court Judge Robert C. Todd said Boles had demonstrated “an unusual hatred and anger at police.”