Rising Toll of Hate Crimes Cited in Student’s Slaying : Race relations: Beating death of Vietnam-born man linked to bigotry. Asian-Americans are monitoring case.

Some witnesses told the police chief that a mob chased down 19-year-old Luyen Phan Nguyen like “a wounded deer” before beating him to death. A friend of the victim says he heard racial epithets and shouts of “Viet Cong” as the frenzy grew. And dozens of onlookers and nearby apartment residents ignored his cries for help.

What is surely the most repellent chapter in this suburban city’s history will get a public airing next week when the first of seven young men charged in connection with the killing last August is due to stand trial on charges of second-degree murder.

Bradley Mills, 19, along with six other white men, is charged with kicking and pummeling Nguyen, a University of Miami pre-med student, after a racial slur at a party led to a fatal melee outside on the lawn. Mills is accused of taking part in violence that left the slight, Vietnam-born man with a fractured neck and bleeding in the brain.

Nguyen died 36 hours after the Saturday night incident without regaining consciousness.

The beating death has not only stunned the 80,000 residents of this middle-class city, northwest of Ft. Lauderdale, but has galvanized Asian-American groups in California and from across the country, several of which plan to send representatives to monitor the trial.

“This incident represents a degree of racial savagery we haven’t seen in 10 years,” said Dennis Hayashi, a co-founder of the National Network Against Anti-Asian Violence, a coalition of some 20 Asian-American associations. “The number and frequency of physical attacks on Asian-Americans is growing at a pace we find very disconcerting.”

Kee Eng, general counsel of the Asian-American Federation of Florida, called Nguyen’s beating “a racially-motivated crime, a hate crime.” Along with encouraging a vigorous prosecution, Eng and others have met in Washington with U.S. Justice Department officials to demand a federal civil rights investigation.

Coral Springs Police Chief Roy A. Arigo says he has received telephone calls and letters from many Asian-American groups and individuals, including Rep. Norman Y. Mineta (D-San Jose). “All want us to follow through, and we will,” says Arigo. “Our concern is that this was a human being who was trashed, no matter what the background is.”

Nguyen, the son of a doctor, and his family came to the United States from Vietnam in 1980. He graduated from Coral Springs High School. At the University of Miami, where he would have been a sophomore this year, he was known as a serious student, outgoing and athletic. His death was a shock.

“I couldn’t believe it when I heard,” said Lam Nguyen, who is not related but got to know the fellow sophomore that friends called Lu through the campus Vietnamese Student Assn. “My parents used to tell me to be careful, and I’d shake it off. Now I look at people a lot more. I’m less innocent than I was.”

Equally shocked are the parents and friends of the seven defendants, all in their late teens and early 20s. Although none were in college, some of the defendants went to high school with Nguyen. All are being held without bail.

Arigo and defense attorneys have attempted to play down the racial aspect of the case, insisting that the beating was fueled by alcohol and a youthful predilection for trouble more than bigotry. “If a person gets into a fight, and the person they’re fighting with happens to be of a different race, they may use words they regret,” said E. Ross Zimmerman, attorney for defendant Christopher Anderson, 18. “Mr. Anderson was intoxicated, as all the boys were. But this is absolutely not a racially-motivated incident.”

Arigo said that some of the defendants have past records, and were known to police as men “who go to parties for nothing more than to start trouble. Some of them liked to fight.”

Others are sure race was a central factor. While the South Florida Asian community is small--just 31,000, or less than 1% of the area’s 4 million residents, according to U.S. Census figures--”discrimination has been brewing under the surface for a while, and it finally manifested itself in a brutal beating death,” said Eng.

Perhaps the most infamous incident of anti-Asian violence in recent years was the 1982 beating death in Detroit of a Chinese-American, Vincent Chin. He was attacked by two unemployed auto workers who mistook him for Japanese and blamed him for their joblessness. Another case that has drawn the attention of Asian-American groups involves the death in Olympia, Wash., of 17-year-old Robert E. Buchanan Jr. Buchanan, who was born in Thailand and is of Asian-caucasian descent, was found Aug. 10 fatally beaten in a railroad tunnel. Two Seattle-area neo-Nazi skinhead men are suspects.

Observers say there is little reliable national data on hate crimes against Asian-Americans, although attacks, which often go unreported, seem to be frequent. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported earlier this year that Asian-Americans were the victims of widespread violence, bigotry and discrimination.

Race is certain to play a central role in the Florida prosecution. Assistant State Atty. Peter F. Magrino refused to comment on tactics, but several witnesses are expected to testify that what began as a typical weekend gathering of young people hosted by two residents of the Springside Apartments turned ugly after a discussion turned to the Vietnam War.

“It started with some comment about his nationality,” said Arigo. “He took offense to it.”

Nguyen and two friends moved outside, according to police, and those he had been arguing with followed. A fight started. At one point, police said, Nguyen broke away from the crowd in an effort to escape. But, said Arigo, “he was chased down a couple of times. Somebody likened it to a wounded deer.”

Police said that as many as 15 men may have taken part in the beating.

R. H. (Bo) Hitchcock, attorney for Mills, said, “The truth is, my guy was involved initially as a peacemaker. He tried to relieve the tension by putting the parties face to face for a talk. Then fists started flying.”

One defendant, Christopher Madalone, told police he saw Mills repeatedly hit and kick Nguyen. He said he also heard Mills, a country club groundskeeper, call for others to join in the attack.

Zimmerman said his client, Anderson, “slapped Mr. Nguyen and called him a drunk. Immediately after that, Mr. Nguyen came at my client, and my client may have struck him again.”

Zimmerman says that members of the Asian community, by showing up in large numbers for each court hearing, “have put unbelievable pressure on the prosecution” to win a conviction in Nguyen’s death.

Police Chief Arigo rues the bad publicity the case has brought for Coral Springs, which he describes as a “progressive city” with no tolerance for lawlessness of any type. “This kind of crime, racially-motivated or not, needs to be aggressively prosecuted,” he said. “We can’t have this total disregard for human life.”

The crime haunts Lu Nguyen’s family, according to Eng. “Lu’s father fought with U.S. forces in Vietnam, and then sought refuge here,” he said. “And then this happens when their son was so close to home, and they couldn’t do anything to help. That eats away at them. He was within two miles of home.”