Victim of Beating Mystified by Pain : Aftermath: Grieving family watches over Loc Minh Truong. Recovering but not yet coherent, he doesn’t recall attack on beach near gay bars.

Lying on a bed in a hospital intensive care unit, Loc Minh Truong fidgeted restlessly.

” Sao dau qua vay ? (Why does it hurt so much?)” he asked in Vietnamese to no one in particular as he touched his swollen, battered face.

” Cai nay la cai gi? (What is this?)” he continued in a slurring voice, tugging on the feeding tube leading to his nose.

“I don’t want to stay home because I’m sad there,” he said, possibly to the figures hovering above him, as he tried to untape the intravenous line on his wrist.

Then, before wincing in pain and drifting off: “Why am I here?”

The 55-year-old Costa Mesa man was brought in critical condition to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center early Saturday after being attacked on a beach behind several gay bars in Laguna Beach. Witnesses called police, who found his nearly lifeless body on the rocky shore. Police arrested several men and juveniles shortly afterward and said Truong was beaten because his attackers thought that he was gay. Wednesday, as Truong rambled on in a litany of non sequiturs, his nephew, Quat Truong, stood by the bedside and watched silently, blinking back tears. A doctor told him that his uncle has improved remarkably since being brought to the hospital.

“How could something like this happen? Why would something like this happen?” Quat Truong asked the doctor, who had no answer.

Loc Truong was unconscious for two days. Now he is heavily sedated for pain, and drifts in and out of sleep. His doctors said Wednesday that his recovery will be rapid but warned that he might not remember the beating.

“Most of these (severely beaten) victims almost always have amnesia to these events,” said the doctor attending Truong, who asked that he not be identified. “Sometimes, the amnesia is permanent; sometimes it just takes time to get the memory back.” Loc Truong was asked about the beating Wednesday.

He looked puzzled and answered in halting phrases that he didn’t even know there had been an attack . . . didn’t remember being on the beach . . . didn’t understand why he is in pain. . . .

He repeatedly said he wanted to get his car so he could drive home. A few times he looked at a visitor, telling her, “Hong, don’t be sad.”

That was a reference to Loc Truong’s daughter Hong, said his sister, Ly Truong, 65.

In 1983, four years after Loc Truong left Vietnam by boat, his wife and daughter slipped out of the country in the night. Their boat was lost during a storm, Ly Truong said, and her brother still hopes that they are alive and will make their way to California.

Ly and Loc, who is the youngest of 10 siblings, had lived together in Santa Ana for several years before Loc Lost his job as an electronics assembler last year. Soon afterward, he moved in with a friend from Vietnam.

“My brother is an innocent,” Ly Truong said in Vietnamese during the ride to the hospital Wednesday. “He is always driving off somewhere, never tell me where he’s going because he knows I worry about him.

“That’s how immature he is,” she said as she began to cry. “That is why all this is so heartbreaking. We don’t know why he was beaten, and when he is well enough to tell us what happened, he’s not going to be able to tell us why either.”

Arriving at the hospital, Ly Truong refused to go inside, preferring to sit in the car in the misty rain.

“I don’t want to see Loc in pain,” she said. “I just want to be close by for my brother, and I want him to know I’m thinking about him.”

Inside the hospital, Quat Truong, 35, tried to convey those thoughts to his uncle. He talked in gentle whispers, but the older man was not coherent.

“Someone’s hatred did that. Someone’s prejudice did that,” said Quat Truong, looking at his uncle’s bruised and cut face. “I want people to see what someone’s hatred could do to an innocent person. I wonder if (the attackers) realized what they have done?”

“Everyday, I thank police who arrived in time and who have done so much to make this less painful, and I thank hospital officials without whom my uncle would be dead,” he said, following a Vietnamese tradition to publicly recognize good Samaritans. “And, I thank the witnesses who were brave enough to help nab those involved in the beating.”

Police have arrested three suspects in connection with the beating. Jeff Michael Raines, 18, of San Clemente, has been charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, inflicting great bodily injury and a hate crime. Charges are expected to be filed against 22-year-old Christopher Michael Cribbins. Prosecutors do not know yet if they will charge a 16-year-old who drove the attackers to the beach.

Raines was identified by witnesses as the principal attacker, police said. He told police that he attacked Loc Truong because the man insulted his friend, according to a police report. The friend, however, told police that the attack was unprovoked and that Raines in the past has told him he wanted “to beat up” a homosexual.

Truong’s family has said he is not gay. “But even if he is, why does that matter?” said Edit Truong, Quat Truong’s wife, “What matters here is that a man was beaten up by another just because he was walking and was by himself. He did nothing wrong.”