Car Could Be Lead to Phillips’ Attackers

Police appear to have closed in on three men who allegedly attacked Joe Phillips, the Chargers’ 315-pound nose tackle, and left him bleeding in a parking lot with severe head injuries early Wednesday.

Using witness accounts, detectives traced the license plate of a Toyota compact car authorities believe the assailants drove from the scene, police spokesman Bill Robinson said. The car was found in Linda Vista and impounded Thursday afternoon, he said.

The suspects were not with the vehicle, and no arrests had been made as of late Thursday.

“We’re still trying to identify the suspects” and determine a motive, Robinson said.

Robinson refused to confirm reports in Thursday’s San Diego Tribune, attributed to a San Diego detective, that the three men will surrender to police today.

“We have not talked to any suspects that I know of,” Robinson said. “I will not confirm that report.”

Robinson said police interviewed Phillips at length Thursday at Sharp Memorial Hospital, where he was being treated for a concussion, broken bone around his eye, broken nose and multiple cuts and bruises.

Phillips, 27, was prepared to deliver a statement to the media but was advised by detectives not to do so, a Charger spokesman said.

Phillips’ wife, Cynthia, was also unavailable for comment.

Three men beat Phillips early Wednesday in the parking lot of Saska’s, a Mission Beach restaurant. Phillips was accompanied by a female friend of teammate Les Miller, who will start at nose tackle in Phillips’ absence. Witnesses said the woman was also chased and knocked down during the attack.

Miller went to Saska’s, a popular night spot for Charger defensive linemen, in search of answers Wednesday night and asked a lot of questions but found out little.

“Nothing I can do,” Miller said. “It’s still not clear why it happened. The questions still haven’t been answered. I know more about what happened, but that still doesn’t tell me why.”

Said defensive line coach Gunther Cunningham: “Les Miller is very close to Joe Phillips, and you can tell it affected Wednesday’s practice. I talked to Les about keeping his head; I know what I’d like to do, and I want to say it, but I can’t. You’ve got to keep your poise and composure. When something like this happens, you just want to go and do something, especially when you deal in the business that we deal in, in which head-knocking happens every day.”

Phillips, Miller said, had been out earlier Tuesday evening with Miller and two of his friends, including the woman who was with Phillips at the time of the assault.

“She’s a very good friend of mine, and both her and her fiance are good friends with Joe,” Miller said. “We had gone out for sushi earlier in the evening--her fiance doesn’t like sushi, and that’s why he wasn’t out with us. It’s no big deal. She’s just a friend. I mean, her boyfriend knows Joe very well.

“I feel badly I wasn’t there with them. It might have been different.”

Said teammate Lee Williams: “I’ve been down there (to Saska’s) quite a few times, that’s why I couldn’t conceive something like this happening. We’d go in groups of three or four. Unfortunately, this was just one of those nights . . . because if it was different, I don’t want to get into it, but we would have whupped some butt.”

Hospital officials continued to refuse to release Phillips’ condition or even confirm he was a patient there. Lee Rice, the Charger team physician, said Phillips will undergo surgery within the week for the eye and nose injuries. Rice said he expects Phillips will stay in the hospital until the surgery, conflicting with a police report that he might be released today.

“I would say it was as severe a beating as I’ve seen,” Rice said. “I think anybody thinner or less strong than Joe would have been in real trouble, and this certainly could have been a life-threatening situation.”

Rice said Phillips likely will miss 10 weeks of the season but said he should be as strong as before after recovery and suffer no long-term effects. Rice said a metal plate will be implanted under the injured eye.

“He actually responded from the concussion pretty well, and in the first 24 hours he was fully recovered from the concussion, except for a headache,” Rice said. “But he was alert, and he had his memory intact and had no altered mental functioning at all. So I’m not so concerned about the concussion as I am about the fractures and the surgery that’s going to fix them.”

According to witnesses and police, the three men made “some pretty innocuous comments” to the woman and Phillips, who apparently responded by approaching the men’s car. The verbal exchange, witnesses said, sparked the confrontation.

The three men were described as being of medium height and build and in their 20s. Phillips is known for his tremendous strength in the weight room.

The men--witnesses told police one wore steel-toed boots--stopped their car and “jumped” Phillips, swarming over him and knocking him to the ground, police said. Phillips was repeatedly beaten about the head, face and ribs, leaving him bloodied, with his T-shirt ripped from his back, witnesses told police.

A witness said the attack lasted between three and five minutes, that the men were unarmed and that Phillips apparently was not able to inflict much damage upon them.

The Tribune quoted Det. Doug Mahnke, who is investigating the incident, as saying the three men did not know Phillips’ identity until they saw TV reports of the assault. The men are “scared to death” and “petrified” and ready to surrender to police, Mahnke was quoted as saying.

Staff Writer T.J. Simers contributed to this story.