Youth Beaten at Irvine High : Officials to Mull Fate of Boys in Revenge Attack

Irvine High School officials will hold a hearing Friday to determine punishment for students who have been charged with severely beating a 14-year-old fellow student, reportedly because he told police about drug sales at the school.

The victim, now 15, underwent surgery for insertion of a pin in his broken leg after the Jan. 18 campus incident. He also suffered a black eye and scrapes and bruises.

The two suspects, ages 16 and 17, have been arrested on suspicion of assault with intent to commit bodily injury, a felony. The names of the suspects and the victim were not released because they are juveniles. The 17-year-old is the son of a lieutenant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, according to the police report.

The 16-year-old, who is on probation for auto theft, also is suspected of beating a friend of the victim, who likewise was believed to have told police about drug sales. The friend did not want to press charges, the police report said.

The two boys now are suspended from school, police reports indicate.

The victim told police that he was assaulted because the suspects “thought he was a ‘snitch’ and that they were getting him back now for telling,” according to the police report.

The report states that two officers happened to be at Irvine High School at the time of the fight. The officers were meeting with the vice principal after they had escorted four students back to campus who had been been found in the adjacent Heritage Park area. A small amount of marijuana was found in one student’s purse, according to the report.

The report said that the two officers had “made several contacts in the last week regarding marijuana smoking in this vicinity. . . .”

The meeting was interrupted by news of the fight near the campus bicycle stand, and the officers recognized the victim’s name from an incident on Jan. 11, according to the report. In that incident, an officer detained the boy because he was “in possession of marijuana residue in a smoking pipe at Irvine High School,” but there was insufficient evidence to prosecute, the report said. However, the boy and a companion “were willing to supply us with information as to when and where Irvine High School students were smoking marijuana.”

It was unclear Monday whether any arrests were made as a result of that information.

The Jan. 18 assault occurred, the victim told police, when he was approached by the 17-year-old, who wanted to know “why he had narced on his friend,” referring to the 16-year-old, the report states.

According to the victim and several witnesses interviewed by police, the 17-year-old hit the victim with closed fists, striking him in the eye and jaw and knocking him down. When the victim tried to get up, the 17-year-old grabbed the back of his shirt, which ripped. At that point, the suspect told police, he knew he should stop.

But then the 16-year-old approached and kicked the victim several times, according to the report. The 16-year-old admitted to authorities before his arrest that he “merely kicked (the victim) to the side of his buttocks area . . . not very hard.” But the other suspect told police that the 16-year-old “even took a two-step flying leap kick to (the victim’s) back, which forced him to the ground again,” and witnesses concurred.

The victim’s mother took him to the doctor and then to Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, where surgeons put a pin in his left leg, which was broken near the ankle. His mother told police that if the leg does not heal properly, the injury “might result in permanent disfigurement,” the report states.

Although the 17-year-old’s father, the sheriff’s lieutenant, told police that his son was not as seriously involved in the assault as the other teen-ager, the police report states: “ . . . it appears that both suspects acted together in carrying out a one-sided assault . . . regardless of whose blow broke (the) leg.”

The hearing Friday is unconnected to the pending criminal case against the boys. Three administrators who are not associated with Irvine High School will hear evidence and determine what punishment should be taken on the school level. The most severe punishment is expulsion, but lesser punishments--such as transferring the boys to another school for independent study--could be handed down, according to Gerald P. Rayl, special assistant to the superintendent of Irvine Unified School District.

The 16-year-old suspect is on probation for auto theft and was also involved in the beating of another Irvine High School student, according to the police report. On Jan. 12, the day after the assault victim and a companion were first approached by police, the companion was hit by the 16-year-old outside a pizza parlor, the report states. The suspect knocked the boy down and kicked him in the face and body several times, according to the report. The boy told police he believes that he was beaten because there were rumors that he had “snitched off” other students for smoking marijuana. He later told police that the suspect apologized.

Since the Jan. 18 assault, the victim has transferred to another school “to give him a safer environment” and because he fears retaliation, his mother has told police. The 16-year-old suspect once telephoned the victim to apologize and offered to let the victim “hit him in the face if he wanted to,” the mother told police.

Times staff writer Mark Landsbaum contributed to this story.