3 Attackers Shoot, Beat Laguna Man in Hate Crime : Assault: The victim is lured into a conversation, then taken away at gunpoint and attacked. He is treated for shotgun wounds.

In what police are classifying as a hate crime targeting gays, a 37-year-old man was beaten and shot in the leg late Tuesday after being stopped by three men on Gaviota Drive, near Coast Highway.

The victim, whose name was withheld by police for his protection, was treated for bruises and wounds from 16 shotgun pellets before being released from South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach.

Police Chief Neil Purcell said Wednesday that officers were passing out flyers and composite drawings of two of the suspects to businesses and bars near the 1300 and 1400 blocks of Coast Highway.

“These are really cowardly acts of people when they start singling out certain classifications of people,” Purcell said, adding that the case is being investigated as an attempted murder.

Police Sgt. Ray Lardie said the incident was the city’s first reported hate crime aimed at gays since a mid-1989 beating that remains unsolved. A widely publicized “gay bashing” in 1988 on a man in Heisler Park ended with maximum prison sentences for three neo-Nazi skinheads.

But Karen Jones, who heads the city’s AIDS Education Task Force, said there have been unofficial reports of people driving by various bars and yelling derogatory comments at people presumed to be gay.

News of the latest attack was received with sadness and anger by civic leaders and gay activists in a city known for its large gay population and tolerance of alternative lifestyles.

“I think this whole thing has gotten worse because of AIDS,” Jones said. “People are against homosexuals because they think they created the AIDS epidemic.”

She and others also wondered how the suspects came to the conclusion that the victim is gay.

“I’m devastated any time this happens,” said City Councilman Robert F. Gentry, Orange County’s only openly gay elected official, “because it symbolizes for me the continued hatred that’s in part of our society about people who don’t deserve that type of hatred.”

Frank Newman, co-chairman of Laguna Outreach, a nonprofit group providing public education on gay issues, said: “When are we going to learn to respect one another as human beings?”

Evelyn Munro, who heads the city’s Human Affairs Committee, said she does not think that the assailants are from Laguna Beach because the city “has a good attitude towards other human beings. We are pretty tolerant folks, and we get along quite well.”

Police said the victim had just gotten off work and stopped at a liquor store on the 1400 block of Coast Highway.

As he left the store in his pickup truck, the victim turned onto Gaviota Drive and was flagged down by someone walking up from the beach, police said. Soon after he parked and they began speaking, a second man with a shotgun approached the passenger’s side of the truck, got in and ordered the victim to follow a yellowish, late-1970s Toyota sedan parked in front of the truck, driven by the third assailant.

With the first man jogging behind the truck, the victim was told to drive a few blocks and into the Brooks Street cul-de-sac.

“Some derogatory remarks were made towards gays,” Sgt. Lardie said.

The victim again parked and stepped out of his truck, police said, then was hit in the face by one of the assailants. He tried to flee but was chased and caught about 30 feet away. There he was struck on the forehead with the butt of the shotgun.

A witness who heard the commotion in the middle of the street yelled out a window, causing the assailants to get in their car and flee.

As they sped away, they passed the victim, who was lying on the side of the road, opened the back door of the car and fired the shotgun, Lardie said.

The victim did not realize he had been shot in the leg until he reached his home, police said.

Because the man did not see the driver of the Toyota, he could provide incomplete descriptions only for the two men who approached his truck, Lardie said.

Times staff writers James Gomez and Lynn Smith contributed to this report.