Youths, Deputies Clash at Theme Park : Santa Clarita: Officers are stoned and businesses and cars vandalized after overflow crowds are turned away from Magic Mountain. Twenty people are hurt.

Hundreds of youths rampaged Saturday through Magic Mountain and the area surrounding the amusement park near Santa Clarita, firing shots, stoning deputies, breaking windows, looting and robbing stores and restaurants and vandalizing cars.

The Sheriff’s Department fielded a force of more than 650 officers--sheriff’s deputies and borrowed California Highway Patrol officers--to wage a battle to force the youths out of the amusement park.

The Sheriff’s Department said gunfire was heard in the park’s employee parking lot. Authorities said about 20 people suffered minor injuries, most apparently because they were injured in the scramble to get out of the park after shots were heard and the force of law enforcement officers swept in.

Sheriff Sherman Block declared the violence was “totally unrelated to the verdicts” in the Rodney G. King civil rights trial that morning; a park spokeswoman noted earlier that the park was jammed in part by patrons celebrating the two guilty verdicts.

The disturbance began as a protest against the overcrowded park’s closing its gates to more admissions in the afternoon while thousands of patrons were still outside, many of them holding tickets to an evening concert by the hip-hop groups TLC and Paperboy. The closure created a massive traffic jam on the Golden State Freeway, which at one point extended eight miles south down the Golden State Freeway.

The park was closed because it had reached its capacity, park spokeswoman Eileen Harrell said. She said only that the park would hold “more than 20,000,” but Block put the park’s capacity at 35,000.

Harrell said the order was issued about 2:30 p.m. but the Sheriff’s Department said the time was about 1 p.m.

Harrell attributed the turnout to a special end-of-spring-break promotion aimed at students, the hip-hop concerts at 7 and 9 p.m., and to people celebrating the end of the Rodney G. King civil rights trial.

The violence came in two waves. An outbreak--beginning after the park gates had closed--in the area around the park during the afternoon had dwindled by sundown. But violence erupted inside the park later Saturday night.

Witnesses said violence began at a dance club called “After Hours” when park officials closed the club when it became crowded. People outside the club broke down the door and that set off looting in the club, which spread through the park, witnesses said.

“Everything is gone in there,” said Amber Marbury, 14, of Inglewood. “Every glass is broken. Everything is stolen.”

The Sheriff’s Department said Magic Mountain officials decided to close the park before the start of the second show at 9 p.m., based on reports of looting, breaking windows and youths rampaging through the park.

Chaos broke out as the deputies tried to force the rampaging youths and other patrons alike out of the park, reportedly causing most of the injuries.

“People were running and being stepped on,” County Fire Department Inspector Jack Pritchard said. “They heard gunshots or thought they heard gunshots, and started running.”

Authorities were investigating reports that some people leaving the park were getting off at other off-ramps in the Santa Clarita Valley and looting. Los Angeles police were alerted after 9:30 p.m. to guard exits in the San Fernando Valley as the crowd moved south.

The first wave of trouble began after the park refused to allow more patrons to enter. “We bought the tickets ahead of time, but we can’t get in,” said Stephane DiChristrina, 19, of Long Beach.

“When am I going to get a refund?” asked Reuben Johnson, 22, who was visiting from New York. “I leave tomorrow to go home.”

Some of the overflow crowd tried to break into the park by climbing fences, Block said. Hundreds of youths congregated on Magic Mountain Parkway between the Golden State Freeway and the park’s gates, and the Sheriff’s Department sent 300 deputies to control them.

A line of 24 deputies in riot gear marched down the hill from the park, pushing the crowd away from the park boundaries. But the crowd flowed toward a commercial strip along the freeway, where some of them stormed a Chevron station, where a window was broken and rocks and bottles were hurled at pursuing deputies, Block said. Windows also were broken at a Wendy’s restaurant and a Marie Callender’s.

Several carloads of the youths robbed a McDonald’s restaurant, manhandling and “shaking up” a clerk, Sheriff’s Sgt. Greg Collins said.

Steve Knipping, the manager at Marie Callender’s, said the restaurant was “ransacked.” “They broke windows and stole some money. They came through so quick. They were in and out in about a minute and a half.”

Also hit in the disturbance was the Hilton Garden Inn. Windows in five first-floor rooms were shattered.

Vandals dented the roofs of cars in the parking lot at the College of the Canyons by jumping on them, Sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Olmsted said. Sheriff’s patrol cars roared into the area, loudspeakers bellowing: “Get out of the way, you’re going to get run over!” to drive the crowd from the parking lot.

“This is ignorant, sure,” Trenise Billyzone, 16, of Rosamond said of the disturbance. “But they brought it on themselves. They should have been prepared for a big crowd.”

The rap and hip-hop group TLC, which consists of three young women, has had several Top 10 hits and played bills with more well-known musicians such as Bobby Brown. Although fairly popular with teen-agers, the lively trio is not known for drawing hard-core rap music fans.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Jonathan Gaw, Alan Abrahamson and Alicia Di Rado.