Motive Suggested in Marine Scuffle : Courts: An angry recruiter attacked a man and left him in a coma, the victim’s friends say. But the defendant’s attorney says it was self-defense.

A parking-lot fight that left a supermarket clerk in a coma was triggered after an El Toro Marine tried to recruit several young men but was rebuffed, according to court testimony by the victim’s friends on Friday.

The testimony marked the first suggestion of a motive in the case against Sgt. Juan Rodriguez, 29, who is undergoing a preliminary hearing in Municipal Court in Fullerton on charges of assault and battery. The hearing is to continue next Friday, when Judge Ronald P. Kreber is expected to decide whether the Marine should stand trial.

Rodriguez, a former boxer, is accused of attacking 22-year-old Larry Hatch of Garden Grove, punching the grocery clerk to the ground and leaving him in a coma that Hatch’s family said lasted two months. Hatch, still weak, is now rehabilitating in the hospital, his family said.

Rodriguez faces not only 10 years in prison if found guilty of the assault charges but also a probable discharge from the Marines, according to his attorney, Dennis O’Connell.

An official recruiter for the Marine Corps, Rodriguez has been confined by court order to the El Toro Marine base pending the outcome of his case. He was brought to Friday’s hearing under Marine escort.

“He’s real nervous,” O’Connell said. Rodriguez will not testify at the preliminary hearing, waiting instead until trial to tell his side of the story. His lawyer claims he acted in self-defense.

But Hatch and his friends dispute that.

The prosecution’s opening witness, 22-year-old Robert Fernandez, a graveyard-shift worker at an Albertson’s grocery store in Anaheim, said that he, Hatch and two friends were working on their fourth six-pack of beer after work on the morning of April 27 when Rodriguez approached their pickup truck in the store parking lot.

“He asked us if we were interested in joining the Marines,” Fernandez recounted.

“No, we’d have to cut our hair,” Fernandez remembered one of his friends saying.

Rodriguez handed the young men his business card anyway, Fernandez said, but several of the young men tossed the cards back.

“He did seem upset because the card was thrown back,” Fernandez said. “His mood changed. . . . At first he was friendly.”

When Rodriguez asked one of the young men why he was being “rude,” Hatch stepped in and told him he should leave the other one alone, according to Fernandez.

Rodriguez then allegedly told Hatch, “Oh, we’ve got a tough guy over here,” and challenged him to get out of the truck and fight, Fernandez said.

Within a few minutes, he said, Rodriguez left the scene and returned with several fellow Marines and blocked the pickup truck with his own vehicle. Then, after an exchange of more words, he grabbed Hatch and punched him several times in the face, sending him to the pavement bleeding and unconscious, according to the witness.

Hatch never threw a punch or made a move toward Rodriguez, Fernandez said.

O’Connell, the defense attorney, said he will try to show that Rodriguez thought Hatch was about to “take a swing at him” when he delivered the two punches.

And he cautioned against reading too much into the size differential between the 6-foot-1, 215-pound Rodriguez, and the 5-foot-7, 150-pound Hatch, a gap that the prosecutor pointed to as a evidence that the Marine was the aggressor.

“Large people have a right to self-defense as much as little people,” O’Connell said. “It was a fight, and (Rodriguez) won it.”

But the victim’s brother, 24-year-old Phil Hatch of Garden Grove, countered, “That was no self-defense.

“I’d love to see that Marine go to jail,” he added. “But no matter how it turns out, it won’t be fair--he’s walking around fine, and my brother weighs 110 pounds now and is still in the hospital.”

GARY AMBROSE / Los Angeles Times