Students Say Attack Was Racially Motivated : Investigation: Police say the fact that both groups involved were ethnically mixed casts doubt on the victims’ claim of a hate crime.

Four architecture students injured in a melee that started in a restaurant in Playa del Rey are claiming that they were victims of a hate crime.

But Los Angeles Police Lt. Otis Dobine, commander of detectives at the Pacific Division, said last week that initial police reports gave no indication of a racial motive for the attack on the students from the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles.

“This is what we describe in the police vernacular as a donnybrook,” he said. “One side gets their head brought to them and they call the police.”

He noted that the student group consisted of two Anglos, a black and Asian, while a Latino and three Anglos made up the other foursome.

“Just that alone would indicate it was not a racial incident,” he said.

The case, which is still under investigation, prompted a protest march last week in Playa del Rey with demonstrators calling for a more aggressive investigation into what they insist was a hate crime.

The incident, which occurred about 10 p.m. June 11, began in The Shack, a popular beer-and-burger restaurant, when student Frank Shao got into an argument over locking the door to the men’s room, said Marc Wallace, 26.

Tempers flared and cooled and flared again as the two groups continued drinking, he said. When Shao left to go to his car, his friends followed to make sure he was not attacked, Wallace said. Shao drove off, but it was then that his friends were surprised by the other group.

Wallace, who is black, said that one of the group targeted him. “Basically he said, ‘We’re going to get you, (racial epithet), we’re going to get your (racial epithet) friend. . . .’ They kept beating me till I guess I was knocked out.”

Wallace suffered a broken nose, a concussion and cuts and bruises. He returned to school last week.

Also injured was Carl Chen, 23, who is Chinese, and William Osborne, an Anglo. A fourth student, Michael Farr, 24, also an Anglo, suffered minor scrapes and did not require treatment.

The students said seven patrol cars from the Pacific Division responded, but instead of immediately trying to find the attackers, the police acted as if the students themselves were at fault.

Farr said he was repeatedly asked to show his identification and that one of the students’ girlfriends was handcuffed after she pressed the police to pursue the attackers.

About 75 of the school’s 450 students attended a meeting at the institute last week to plan the protest as well as a letter-writing campaign to police and perhaps a boycott of the bar.

Michael Rotondi, director of the institute, condemned the attack.

“It doesn’t matter that no one was killed and there weren’t any guns involved,” he said. “We find this absolutely repugnant and immoral.”

He added, “It’s crazy. You can’t go into Playa del Rey for a beer and a hamburger without worrying that you’re going to get your nose kicked into your brain.”

The students also criticized the management of The Shack, a watering hole frequented by students from the school, commonly known as “SCI-ARC.”

But Mark Hoyt, a manager at the restaurant, said the incident was being blown out of proportion.

“Some guys exchanged words in a bathroom,” he said. “From there, the rest of the problem was theirs. It happened in a park about a block away.”

Times staff writer Mathis Chazanov contributed to this story.