Laguna Home Target of 4th Recent Hate Crime

Vandals broke into an Asian man’s home in an affluent neighborhood here and spray-painted swastikas and other racist graffiti on every wall, as well as the carpeting and furniture, police said.

The defacing of the two-story house on Crescent Bay Drive is the fourth race-based hate crime reported to police this month in south Orange County.

The graffiti--all on the home’s interior--included the phrases “Oriental Out” and “Chinese Out,” in large black lettering, as well as the initials AB, which police said stood for Aryan Brotherhood.

The crime was discovered Monday morning by a friend of the homeowner, who was taking in the mail while the man was out of town.

The house “was covered with graffiti. There wasn’t a room that was untouched,” Police Sgt. Donald Barney said Wednesday.

The vandals apparently entered the house by smashing a side window, Barney said. Although a stereo and videocassette recorder may have been stolen, he said the break-in is being investigated as a hate crime because the intruders focused their efforts on the graffiti.

Police are trying to speak with Alfred Lee and want to ask him if he had been harassed before. “Lots of times with hate crimes it doesn’t start this big,” Barney said.

Other residents on Crescent Bay Drive described the neighborhood as very tolerant and close-knit. They said that although many people living on the street are good friends, they don’t know Lee, who is a bachelor, very well.

“He is almost invisible in the neighborhood. He has been a good, pleasant and quiet neighbor who has lived here for about three years,” said one neighbor.

The friend who had agreed to check on Lee’s home said he is not certain when the crime occurred because he had not gone inside the house since Nov. 19. “I wish I had gone in more often,” said the man, who asked that his name not be used.

Police said the most previous hate crime in Laguna Beach has been directed against gays. Barney said investigators will compare the graffiti found at the Lee residence with photographs of other White-Power graffiti that have been discovered in the city.

Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, said of the Laguna Beach vandalism: “Like other hate-related crimes it is a very troubling, very disheartening, especially in the holiday season. When everyone else is celebrating, the family (of this man) will come together to share their horror and fear.”

The attack on the Lee home is the latest in a series of racist crimes reported in South County in recent weeks. On Nov. 18 swastikas and skinhead-gang slogans were found spray-painted over portions of the Trabuco Hills High School in Mission Viejo. On Nov. 7 the dorm room of a Latino freshman at UC Irvine was defaced with racial slogans. And racist graffiti was found painted on a wall and door of a Lake Forest preschool owned by a black woman on Nov. 6.