Man Arrested in Racial Attack on Boy, 3 Friends : Crime: Texas license plate, 2-COOL, leads to El Toro suspect. A fellow worker, however, said, ‘. . . I can’t picture this happening.’

The manager of a Tustin auto-parts shop was arrested Tuesday for allegedly running four children off the road with his sports car, then attacking a 12-year-old black boy among the group while screaming racial slurs.

Paul Richard Klein, 28, of El Toro faces charges of assault and battery, assault with a deadly weapon and civil rights violations. Because of a 1987 state law that stiffened penalties for hate crimes, he could face more than four years in prison if convicted, authorities said.

Klein, a former Texas resident, was arrested about 1 p.m. and booked on $10,000 bail after questioning by Orange County sheriff’s deputies at the Super Shops store he manages in Tustin. Investigators were led to him through a witness’s notation of the Texas license plate on his car, 2-COOL, authorities said.

“I just can’t believe there are still people out there who have so much hatred. I’m just shocked,” said the mother of the 12-year-old victim; the woman moved to Mission Viejo six years ago with her family after living in a primarily black neighborhood in New Jersey.

Sheriff’s deputies said they also have identified a suspect in a second hate crime, which occurred Friday night at John Wayne Airport in Costa Mesa.

In that incident, Wendell Clayton Carmichael, 34, of San Francisco said he was taunted with racial epithets by three men in a sports car while waiting for his ride outside the airport. He said he was then struck and knocked to the ground by one of the men with a heavy box.

Sheriff’s Department officials said the two cases do not appear to be connected.

Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Bob Rivas declined to provide the name of the suspect in the airport case, who also was apparently tracked down through a license plate. But he said investigators may turn the case over to the district attorney’s office for review as early as today.

In the case of the 12-year-old Mission Viejo boy, news of an arrest was met with both relief and lingering bitterness over the incident.

“Damned good,” Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the county’s Human Relations Commission, said when told of the arrest. “That was really quick. It’s really a relief and it’s nice to see such quick justice.”

But the mother of the 12-year-old victim, who asked not to be identified, said the incident won’t quickly be forgotten in her Mission Viejo home.

She said her son did not appear to be badly hurt, except for a few scrapes, but “he was pretty shaken up about the whole thing. He won’t even dare think about walking back to the store. . . . He’s been in the house ever since it happened.”

Speaking for the first time, the mother gave this account of the incident.

On Sunday afternoon, she said, her son and three school-age friends from the neighborhood--two white girls and a boy who is half black and half Puerto Rican--walked to get some ice cream at the Oak Tree Village complex about five minutes away.

They were walking back on Via Pimiento, near Los Alisos Boulevard, when they saw a blue sports car, she said.

“They said this guy tried to hit them with his car, so they ran across the street and he started to follow them up the hill,” she said.

Getting out of his car, the man “grabbed my son, slapped him in the face and punched him in the ribs and made him lay down on the ground. . . ,” she said.

The man stood with his foot on her son, shouting racial slurs, she said. He also yelled at the girls and demanded to know why they were hanging around with blacks, she said.

Scared, the other children ran away to try to get help.

The mother said she herself has been the victim of racism in Mission Viejo, told to “go back to Africa” after she got a parking spot that a white man wanted at the grocery store.

“But for an adult to act like this with children, that’s ridiculous,” she said. “I’d like to get in (the jail) myself and kick his behind. He needs to serve some time.”

But those who know Klein offered a different picture.

Deborah Rucker, the manager of the 140-unit Canyon Woods apartment complex on Los Alisos Boulevard where Klein lives, said that she has had no problems with Klein since he moved into the unit with his girlfriend a year ago.

Frank Salazar, a regional manager with Super Shops, said: “This is a major surprise. The guy’s straight up--he’s got a good attitude, helpful. In fact, his best friend, who’s like a blood brother, is black. That’s why I can’t picture this happening.

Times correspondent Len Hall contributed to this report.