Good Samaritans Beaten After Trying to Give Aid : Crime: Two teen-agers who stopped to help a man are attacked with a tire iron, police say.

Jason Greenberg grew up in a house where helping others was part of the holiday ritual, where his mother brought homeless people to their dinner table to share the family’s bounty.

Early on, Greenberg, 19, also learned that there are risks to dealing with strangers: One of the homeless men who was welcomed into his mother’s home tried to strangle her with a telephone cord, Greenberg said. After that, Greenberg’s mother stopped welcoming the less fortunate.

Still, his mother, Murielle, notes, children may have to learn their parents’ lessons for themselves.

Hours after finishing their Thanksgiving meals, Greenberg and his best friend, David Becker, 17, were beaten with a tire iron when they stopped to help a motorist who the teen-agers thought had been in an accident. Los Angeles police say the man, Sergio Gutirrez, 30, a transient from Reseda, was drunk and probably believed he was being robbed.

It was early Friday morning when Greenberg and David dropped off a friend and were driving home past Balboa Park. They spotted a car straddling both lanes of traffic. Its side was dented and scraped, Greenberg said, as if it had been in an accident. The driver was slumped over the wheel.

The two teen-agers got out of their car and banged on the windows of the stalled car. The man inside did not move and Greenberg recalls thinking he was dead.

They forced open the car door.

“I was shaking the guy, saying: ‘Are you all right? Are you all right?’ and he started making noises and he looked up and he socked me in the head,” Greenberg said. “I told him ‘amigos,’ friends, you know, because he wasn’t speaking English and obviously he was drunk or something. I said, ‘We just want to help you.’ ”

The man hit Greenberg twice in the chest, knocking him down, he said. Greenberg screamed for David to make a run for their car. The man reached into the car and pulled out what looked like a jack stand, or tire iron, Greenberg said.

“I went to open the car door and he threw it at me, hitting the car door and the door wouldn’t open after that,” Greenberg said. “He picked it back up and tried to hit me. And then Dave ran up behind him and grabbed him, and he turned around and hit Dave in the head with the jack stand and split his head open.”

The three struggled for the metal bar, “all in a little ball, just brawling,” Greenberg said, and as he wrested the bar away, David fell to the ground unconscious. The attacker took off into the park, Greenberg said, and he took David to the hospital.

“I was scared, I thought he was going to die,” Greenberg said. “He’s like my best friend.” But 10 stitches later, David was ready to go home.

Gutirrez was later arrested for two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, said Los Angeles Police Sgt. Timothy Moss.

“I’m all bruised up, but I’m just glad Dave is all right,” Greenberg said. “I don’t think I’m going to stop and help no more people on the side of the road, I can tell you that.”