Outpouring of Support Greets Vandal Victims

Experts in crime and prejudice Thursday night urged neighbors of Szebelski and Matilda Freeman, the black Agoura couple whose house was vandalized last month in an apparent racial attack, to prevent similar incidents by watching out for each other and confronting bigotry.

An overflow crowd of 50 civic leaders and residents of Saratoga Ranch, a predominantly upper middle-class subdivision west of the San Fernando Valley, attended a meeting near the Freemans’ residence, which was the target of an apparent hate crime Aug. 29 for the second time in three years.

“When the community comes together like this and not only expresses outrage but bands together to watch out for one another, it can prevent this kind of thing from happening again,” said Mary Krasn, an assistant director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, which organized the meeting.

“If neighbors come out, it can show support and make them less vulnerable to this kind of attack,” Krasn said. The meeting drew a larger than expected crowd, forcing the group to move outside from a neighbor’s living room.

An estimated $30,000 damage was caused by the intruders, who slashed chairs, overturned kitchen appliances and spray-painted swastikas and racial epithets at the residence of the retired real-estate broker.

No arrests have been made and investigators have no leads in the case, Los Angeles County sheriff’s Detective Imon Mills said earlier Thursday. The case was referred this week for investigation to the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission by Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

There was a similar incident at the Freeman residence in October, 1987, in which property was damaged and racial epithets were spray-painted, Mills said.

In yet another incident July 2, the Agoura Hills residence of a family of Middle Eastern descent was broken into and vandalized, its walls spray-painted with illegible writing. That attack, Mills said Thursday, appeared to be unrelated to the Freeman case.

“I came because I was so offended by it and I felt it was necessary to stand up and show support,” Roni Birkner of Agoura said Thursday.

Freeman told the crowd of supporters that he would neither leave the neighborhood nor change his lifestyle. “Being free has a price to pay,” he said, referring to his surname.

The Rev. David Hunting of Agoura Community Church brought the Freemans a condolence card signed by members of his congregation. And Rabbi Alan Greenbaum of Temple Adat Elohim in Thousand Oaks came to represent the Jewish community because “it doesn’t matter if the focus of the hatred is a black family or a Jewish family or an Asian family, the statement of anger ultimately is to all of us so we need to respond to that as a community.”

Matilda Freeman said before the meeting that her family’s anguish over the attack had been eased by an outpouring of community support, including help with cleaning up their house and the establishment of a reward fund, which contains $3,000. The reward is for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the vandals.

HATE CRIMES INCREASE: B1