Riot Beating Case Down to Lone Suspect

A lone defendant and a nearly empty Santa Monica courtroom are all that remains of what began as a potentially explosive case against five black men charged in the beating of a white bicyclist in Venice during the early hours of rioting last spring.

Prosecutors have watched their case erode as at least one fearful witness in the racially charged case refused to testify against the men and others were unable to identify who was involved in the April 29 beating, which began a night of terror throughout the gentrifying Oakwood neighborhood.

The district attorney’s office has accepted pleas from two men believed to have been leaders in the violence and dropped charges against two others because they are expected to serve time for related offenses.

The trial of the fifth defendant, Arron Soil, 23, is under way before Judge David Perez in Santa Monica Superior Court. Soil decided to have the case tried before a judge instead of a jury. Lawyers on both sides acknowledged that it would have been difficult to obtain a guilty verdict from a jury because the only prosecution witnesses in the racially charged case are white.

Testimony is expected to end Wednesday.

The case was dubbed “Denny West” for its similarities to the televised beating of truck driver Reginald O. Denny that occurred later that afternoon in South-Central Los Angeles. Authorities were monitoring the Oakwood case out of concern that the verdicts might spark a repeat of the violence in which neighborhood businesses were looted and cars and several homes were attacked by roving mobs.

“The posture of the case has clearly changed,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Stone. The piecemeal settlement of the charges “definitely diminished the notoriety, the tension around the case,” he said.

Witnesses said that after verdicts were read in the police beating of Rodney G. King, a crowd of young men gathered along Brooks Avenue in Oakwood and began throwing chunks of concrete at cars carrying white people. About 6:30 p.m., the passing bicyclist, Mark Rosenberg, was knocked down and beaten unconscious. Rosenberg, who suffered a concussion and broken collarbone, eventually was helped by passersby, including a black resident who got out of her car and sent attackers scattering.

Two neighbors who were watching testified that Soil was part of what one of them compared to a shark attack on Rosenberg.

Marshall Bagby, who lives nearby, testified that a group of 10 to 15 people took turns in the attack, throwing rocks and bottles and even picking up the bicycle to hit Rosenberg. Bagby said Soil urged the others on and took part in the beating. He said Rosenberg was struck 20 to 25 times.

“To me it was like a feeding frenzy. Once it started, it gained intensity,” Bagby said before a courtroom gallery that was empty except for Soil’s mother.

The only other prosecution witness, Suzanne Williams, said Soil kicked and threw a bottle at the fallen cyclist. Williams said her house was fired upon that evening. She has since moved to Texas.

But defense witnesses testified this week that Soil was not involved. They said only a few people took part in the beating--not the mob described by Bagby and Williams.

A neighbor, Vera Quinn, said she did not see Soil among the crowd that swelled and moved along Brooks Avenue before the incident.

Vera Darby, who like Soil lives in an apartment building next to where the beating took place, testified that she watched from an upstairs window as Soil’s mother pulled him in from the sidewalk at the time of the beating. The only assailant she was able to identify was Shauntee Snodgrass, 21, who has pleaded no contest to an assault charge in the case.

Prosecutors questioned why Quinn and Darby had not come forward before to tell authorities what they saw.

Snodgrass and James Hill, 23, face up to two years in prison for their roles. Charges were dropped against Melvyn Hayward Jr., 19, son of Oakwood community activist Melvyn Hayward Sr., and Barron Deal, 23. Hayward was sentenced to nine months in jail for looting a Venice car-stereo store, and Deal, who is a felon, could face a year in prison if he is found to have violated his parole.

Bagby testified that the mob returned after dark and smashed the windows of his front porch in a hail of rocks, shouting “Get the Cracker!” and “Burn the White Boy Out!” No other witnesses to the attack have come forward.

Defense attorney Leonard B. Levine hammered at Bagby’s credibility by pressing him on the fact that Bagby had earlier misidentified two other alleged participants out of a police photograph lineup of gang members. One of those he selected was in prison at the time of the riots; the other is dead.

That is not the only problem that has bedeviled prosecutors.

First, there is a shortage of witnesses in a case that lacks evidence such a videotape. One witness who identified two suspects to police later refused to testify for the prosecution after she allegedly was threatened by a neighbor, who faces witness-tampering charges. The witness, Latanya Thompson, is expected to testify for the defense next week that Soil was not involved in the attack, as is the motorist who stopped to help the victim. Rosenberg remembers nothing of the attack.