Family Cleaning Up Debris of Hate Crime

One cool afternoon last November, a particularly vicious brand of racism paid a chilling visit to a black family on Barents Street.

Duvahn De Silva, then a 14-year-old Laguna Hills High School freshman, returned home to find that vandals had gone on a rampage with a can of spray paint.

Racial slurs were sprayed across a newly reupholstered ivory brocade couch, the cathedral ceilings, the mirror in the living room.

The vandals hadn’t stopped at the graffiti. Every faucet in the house had been turned on and the sinks blocked, causing extensive flooding and damaging numerous family mementos. The graffiti and water damage at the $370,000 home was estimated at tens of thousands of dollars.

The incident was immediately condemned by the Orange County Human Relations Committee, which held a news conference with community leaders and representatives from the Sheriff’s Department to denounce the perpetrators of the break-in.

Meanwhile, the savagery of the attack shocked residents of the neighborhood, sparking an outpouring of support from neighbors who rallied around the family.

Sheriff’s detectives described the incident as the first serious hate crime they could recall in South County, speculating that the vandalism was the work of skinheads.

Seven months later, sheriff’s officials say they are no closer to solving the case than they were back in November. Although there have been numerous tips, none has paid off.

“We got a lot of calls and followed up on a lot of potential leads, but they never developed into anything,” Sheriff’s Lt. Robert Rivas said. “It’s still an open case, but obviously with no other leads, there’s nothing to go on.”

Rivas said investigators looked at other hate crime cases but were unable to find a connection between those and the vandalism at the De Silvas’ home. However, Duvahn’s father, Delano De Silva, who works as a commercial insurance underwriter in Irvine, says his family is not bitter.

“I would have liked it if they had caught the person, but there’s only so much that they can do, really,” he said. “To me, there was damage to property, which was insured . . . but there wasn’t any hurt to life.”

The family has replaced the damaged furniture and changed the color schemes to help blot out the terrible memories, De Silva said. Now that the physical reminders of the incident are gone, the family has spent the last several months trying to get their lives back to normal.

“It’s a really funny feeling because you feel like your privacy has been invaded,” De Silva said. “You feel like you have to re-establish that domain and that’s what we’ve been trying to do.”

De Silva, 44, one of eight children born to a Panamanian boat builder, joined the U.S. Air Force in his early 20s and later became a U.S. citizen. Before the vandalism, the father of three teen-age sons said he frequently discussed racism with his children as they were growing up.

“I always make it a point to discuss these incidents, never knowing if you’re going to be a victim,” he said.

Just a few days ago, he said, his son Duvahn, now 15, asked permission to invite a classmate over--the first time he has expressed an interest in having company since the Nov. 14 incident.

“I’ve seen worse and I’ve been through worse,” Delano De Silva said. “When there’s no loss of life, you always have another opportunity, and that’s the way you have to look at things.”