Ocean Beach Victim Calls Shooting a ‘Hate Crime’

A 26-year-old black man has told police he was shot early Monday morning after four white men in a pickup yelled racial slurs at him and three of them chased him down an Ocean Beach street, threatening him with tire irons.

Philip Lewis of Ocean Beach was in fair condition at UC San Diego Medical Center on Monday. A San Diego police spokesman said the incident is being investigated as a possible hate crime.

A hate crime is a crime committed on the basis of race, ethnicity, religious or sexual orientation. Since Jan. 1, 32 hate crimes have been reported to San Diego police, said a spokeswoman in the department’s crime analysis unit. Within the Sheriff’s Department jurisdiction, six hate crimes have so far been reported, said sheriff’s crime analyst Murray Whichard.

Lewis said he was walking home alone from a friend’s house, in the area of Abbott and Voltaire streets, shortly after midnight when a pickup stopped about 20 yards in front of him. Four white men in the truck yelled a variety of racial slurs at him, he said.

“I thought they were friends of mine at first . . .,” Lewis said in a telephone interview from the hospital.

Realizing the men weren’t his friends, Lewis, a cabinet maker’s assistant, said, he walked past the truck but they continued to follow him.

Lewis said he told the men to leave but they continued to call him names. Then he said the man riding in the passenger seat yelled “unload,” and three of the four men jumped out of the truck with tire irons and starting chasing him.

Lewis said he ran to a nearby trailer stocked with 2-by-4 pieces of wood and grabbed a piece of wood to protect himself.

The men, who had gotten back into the truck, spotted Lewis again and jumped out of the truck, he said. Lewis said he ran down an alley, where he hid for about 10 minutes behind some boxes near a liquor store, in the 4900 block of Voltaire.

Figuring he had lost the men, Lewis said, he ventured into the liquor store parking lot and put down his 2-by-4.

“So I was crossing the next street, and then I hear wheels peeling out,” Lewis said. “They were waiting for me.”

“I just heard an explosion, I thought they threw a bomb at me,” Lewis said.

Lewis was hit in the arm with 50 shotgun pellets, as well as in the lower back and buttocks. After being shot, Lewis said, he ran to the nearby house of a friend, who called an ambulance and the police. Police have made no arrests, said police spokesman Bill Robinson.

Lewis said the color of his skin prompted the attack.

“It’s a hate crime,” Lewis said. “I’ve never seen them before, but I know what kind of people they are.”