Soccer Star Charged With Assaulting Rival

A soccer player at one of the most prestigious private schools in California was charged Friday with assault and battery for kicking a rival player in the head--apparently the first time in state history that criminal charges were filed against an athlete for violence on the playing field.

Dwight Angelini, 17, of Harvard-Westlake High School of Studio City was accused of deliberately kicking Ryan Herrera of Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks in an attack during a Feb. 3 match that was captured on videotape.

Angelini, who plans to attend Yale University and play soccer for the Ivy League school, was charged with one count of felony assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury and one count of felony battery with serious bodily injury.

The difference between a felony charge and a misdemeanor is minimal in juvenile cases, because, unlike an adult, there is no chance that the youth would be sentenced to a state prison, said Dan Murphy, director of special operations for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors will not ask that Angelini be sent to a California Youth Authority camp or other confinement, Murphy said. “The probable outcome is that this young man, who does not have any prior contacts with the law, will probably be placed on probation,” he said.

Neither Angelini nor his attorney, Roger Rosen, were available for comment Friday.

Experts were unaware of another case in California in which criminal charges were filed against an athlete for an on-field incident.

“This case is quite different,” Murphy said. “The evidence in this case is real clear. This is a gratuitous kick to the face that lifts the young man off ground and renders him unconscious. It is far away from the play, and we were unable to determine any provocation” by Herrera.

The key evidence that led to the charges against Angelini was a videotape made by a parent of one of Herrera’s teammates.

On the tape, after a Harvard-Westlake player throws the ball into the field of play, Angelini and Herrera appear in the lower right-hand portion of the frame, about five yards from the ball.

Herrera is on the ground on his hands and knees and Angelini is standing over him. Angelini, nowhere near the ball, then kicks Herrera on the right side of the head. Herrera’s head snaps with the force of the kick, and he slumps to the ground, grabbing his head.

He was taken from the field by ambulance, treated at a hospital for a concussion and released that night.

“In filing these charges we have carefully considered the wide scope of contact which occurs during sporting events at all levels of experience, from Little League to professional sports,” Murphy said in a prepared statement.

“The assault committed in this case occurred . . . where such a deliberate, violent act far exceeds the bounds of anyone’s definition of sportsmanlike conduct and is clearly beyond the bounds of any reasonable expectation of contact.

“The mere fact that violence occurs on a field will not stop us from filing a case,” Murphy said. “Which is not to say that we plan on filing cases every time two kids knock heads on a football field. We aren’t looking to set a precedent.

“But a criminal assault is no less criminal because it occurs on an athletic field.”

Herrera, a junior, did not play again for the remainder of the season because of his physical condition. He said Friday that he still suffers from intense migraine headaches and neck pain when he tries to play soccer.

Angelini was ejected from the match--his fourth ejection of the season and third in three matches--and dismissed from the team immediately after the incident. He was also suspended from school for two days.

His coach, Barclay Mackinnon, was suspended from coaching for a week.

Angelini went to a Notre Dame practice the day after the incident and apologized to the team.

Harvard-Westlake administrators, who considered expelling Angelini but did not, described him as a bright, well-liked student from a financially disadvantaged family who excels in all fields at the academically challenging private school.

“He’s a great kid,” said Headmaster Thomas C. Hudnut soon after the incident. He was not expelled because he is ordinarily “a mild-mannered, mellow--yet serious about school--person,” Hudnut said. But “he’s a real tiger out on the soccer field.”

The Herrera family, who say they plan to file a civil suit against Harvard-Westlake for possible negligence, praised the decision to file criminal charges.

“I guess (Angelini) needs to be punished, with how intentional that kick was,” Ryan Herrera said. “This is a good punishment to stop him from doing something like that again.”

Herrera’s mother, Gloria, agreed.

“I know that (the charges) are going to bring about more attention to unnecessary athletic violence,” she said. “It will generate a lot of good because of that. . . . Yet I feel very, very sad, because there’s Dwight, who didn’t have to resort to such violence.”

Angelini, a two-time All-Southern Section selection, had drawn interest from such top schools as Stanford, Dartmouth, North Carolina State, Clemson and Georgetown before the incident. Mackinnon acknowledged a few weeks after Angelini’s March 8 arrest that some schools shied away from Angelini because of the episode.

However, Yale coach Steve Griggs said three weeks ago that he continued to recruit Angelini after the incident.