Supporters of Assault Victim Stage Vigil, Appeal for Justice

In a quiet but emotional ceremony, friends and supporters of Amber Jefferson gathered for a candlelight vigil outside the Orange County Sheriff’s Department on Friday to express their sorrow over the near-fatal beating of the 15-year-old cheerleader.

“We did not come to point fingers or to make accusations,” said Ben Carrington, director of the Orange County chapter of Place For Us, a multiracial counseling group based in Los Angeles. “We’ve come to rally around a family in need and lend our compassion to Amber and the Jeffersons.”

The Garden Grove teen-ager at the center of the racial storm left a church meeting earlier in the day, saying she was suffering from dizziness. Her father, William Jefferson, said she was too ill to attend the evening vigil.

Jefferson lit the first candle as about 25 people joined hands to form a large circle on the Plaza of the Flags and bowed their heads in prayer. He burst into tears during the brief ceremony.

“I’m just so tired of all of this,” Jefferson said.

Steve White, pastor of the Living Hope Community Church in Stanton, prayed that Amber’s beating would provoke changes.

“Don’t let this incident be brushed under the rug,” White said.

Absent from Friday’s ceremony was any criticism of the Sheriff’s Department. In the month since the beating, the Jeffersons and some community leaders have accused authorities of mishandling the investigation because the victim is black and the alleged assailants are white.

Amber’s jaw was smashed with a baseball bat and her face was deeply slashed during a midnight brawl involving a dozen people outside a Stanton apartment complex on Aug. 6. On one side were white teen-agers and a 42-year-old man. On the other side were Amber and several of her black, white and Latino teen-age friends.

Amber and her friends say they were attacked by white men who screamed racial slurs as they swung baseball bats. The alleged assailants said the fight escalated from a dispute between two girls over a boyfriend and was not racially motivated.

No one has been arrested in connection with the attack.

The Sheriff’s Department has recommended that the district attorney file a broad array of criminal charges--including hate crime violations--against seven members of the group that fought with Amber’s friends. Investigators also recommended that charges of fighting, disturbing the peace and assault with a deadly weapon be filed against five members of Amber’s group. No charges are being considered against Amber, a freshman at Santiago High School in Garden Grove.

Authorities have said that the investigation has been complicated by multiple suspects giving contradictory accounts of the incident, and, in some cases, changing their stories.

But Amber’s supporters said they believe that if the the attackers had been black, there would have been an arrest.

Amber’s father is black, and her mother is white. The candlelight vigil drew members of multiracial families who said they felt a deep affinity with the Jeffersons. One of them, Oliver Glover, 35, a former San Francisco police officer who lives in Orange, said he had called the Sheriff’s Department two weeks ago to express his concern that no arrest had been made.

“I’m feeling extremely frustrated that something like that could happen, and the lack of action taken by the Sheriff’s Department is absolutely incredible,” said Glover. “As an ex-cop, I find it phenomenal.”

Among the white families at the ceremony were Chris Sandoval, 34, of Santa Ana, who came with his wife and 3-month-old son, Nicholas.

“We’re here for the children,” Sandoval said. “We don’t want a world for our son to grow up in where something like this could happen to him.”

Sources in the district attorney’s office had said that charges might be filed in the case as early as Friday. But late in the day, the sources said that interviews with key medical experts had taken longer than expected. They said prosecutors hope to reach a decision in the case on Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, at a service at Living Hope Community Church, a few blocks from the complex where she was attacked, Amber and her mother joined supporters in a public appeal for justice in the case and prayed for racial harmony.

“The sooner these people are put in jail, the sooner Amber will be able to find some peace,” said Cody Donnelly, her mother. “It’s been 31 days as of today.”

Stanton Mayor Ed Allen also spoke at the church, marking the first time an Orange County elected official has made a public statement about the racially charged case.

“I must say that this dastardly thing that happened to Amber has opened a lot of people’s eyes,” Allen said. “As far as the police bringing the culprits to bear, I’m sure they will.”

Times staff writer Jerry Hicks contributed to this report.