Tragic Death Left Scar on San Clemente : Woods case: A white teen’s killing, and arrest of young Latinos, exposed a racial divide in their town.

It was a horrifying crime that burned itself into the conscience of the community, stirring angry protests and revealing hidden racial divisions in a city known for gleaming beaches and quiet normalcy.

A white teen-ager was dead, killed in a bizarre way, and six Latino teens were quickly arrested, touching off fierce demands for a heavy-fisted response to apparent gang violence.

But over time, the incident has become less about law and order. It is more about something common among people, white and Latino. It is about emotional pain and suffering. About different perceptions of reality. And, ultimately, about justice.

No one touched by the young life of Stephen Woods or his tragic death can escape the frustrating questions being raised still. Ask Christi Malberg. Ask Victor Villalobos. Ask Lt. Tom Davis. Ask Dominga Marin Perez.

Malberg’s frantic cries for help rang out that Oct. 15 night as she sat beside a mortally injured Woods. “Hold on, Steve. We’re almost at the hospital. Don’t leave me now,” the teen-ager pleaded, taking Woods’ hand and trying to comfort him.

Only moments earlier Malberg, 14, Woods and eight other teen-agers in three vehicles had driven through a barrage of flying rocks and beer cans thrown by a group that police later described as gang members and their “associates.”

Woods, 17, Malberg’s friend and schoolmate at San Clemente High School, was slumped over unconscious; a metal paint roller rod hurled toward their car had lodged in his head like a spear. He died about a month later, after lying in a coma at Kaiser Permanente Hospital-Orange County in Anaheim.

“Almost every bad dream I have now, my friends die,” Malberg said in an interview. “I had one dream. I came to school, and the whole school had been shot, the whole school was dead. I was the only one alive. I never die in any of my dreams, but all my friends die.”

Nearly five months after the incident that shocked the community, the assault and its aftermath have revealed racial tensions in this coastal haven that’s known for surf, sun and for being the Western White House during Richard Nixon’s presidency.

While whites still outnumber Latinos nearly 10 to one, the Latino population has doubled in the past decade to 5,285--about 13% of the city’s 41,000 residents, according to the 1990 U.S. Census.

Like Malberg, Victor Villalobos, 38, has been changed by what happened. As the father of 19-year-old Arturo Villalobos, one of the Latinos charged in the attack, Villalobos has unexpectedly found himself waging a public crusade against what he believes is the community’s quick condemnation and stereotyping of Latinos.

“The media has not helped,” Villalobos said, angrily claiming that sensationalistic news coverage has portrayed the attack as “Mexicans versus innocent white kids.”

And he rails against the police for allegedly stopping, photographing and intimidating the city’s young Latino men, starting after the Woods incident--allegations that police officials deny.

“This was an accident,” Villalobos said. “How could you plan having someone break the window of a car going 40 miles an hour, and then in the next split second have another person throwing a paint roller rod so that it strikes someone in the head? This is a conspiracy? That’s a ridiculous charge.”

“We’re not all gang members,” said Villalobos. “Even my other son, Victor Jr., who is not a gang member, has been stopped numerous times and cited three times for moving violations since the Woods boy died.”

Arturo Villalobos has pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and gang involvement and faces a prison term of four to 14 years. The five other defendants have been charged with murder, conspiracy and assault. They await trial.

But Arturo’s father says the criminal justice system failed his son.

“He pleaded guilty on the advice of his attorney who told him to plead guilty to a lower charge and the judge will give him leniency,” Villalobos said. “I feel ashamed that I didn’t advise my son to fight the charge.”

Villalobos is convinced that race has played a role in how the community reacted to the assault that killed Woods.

“People keep telling us that it isn’t a racial thing,” he said. “But we’ve also heard that a lot of people believe that before the Woods thing there was always a lot of violence with Mexicans against Mexicans, yet there wasn’t a big thing in the newspapers and on TV until this Woods boy was killed.”

There is another kind of pain for the Villalobos family. He said his wife, Guillermina, is ashamed that the actions of Arturo and neighborhood youths had anything to do with Woods’ death. It is hard for them to deal with the notoriety the case has brought to the family’s once-quiet life.

“My wife,” Villalobos said, “can’t speak about it. The incident has made her a nervous wreck. When she does, the way she usually talks is with lagrimas, tears.”

For some time, many residents, including Latinos, have worried that gang violence in San Clemente had reached the danger point. In late October and early November, after the Woods episode, two gang shootings erupted between rival groups, the San Clemente Varrio Chico and the Capistrano Old Town.

Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Tom Davis, chief of police services in San Clemente, said it wasn’t the Woods case alone, but the increasing incidents of gang activity, that led to a new procedure.

Now, deputies make routine traffic stops and photograph all potential gang members, no matter what their skin color. But individuals are asked whether they’ll allow their photograph to be taken, he said.

Davis said the youths in the Woods incident were gang members, and even if they weren’t, “they killed somebody. And that’s the bottom line here. Also, they injured and hurt other people and have hurt themselves.”

Fatal Confrontation

It was a Friday night, and Malberg and her friends were looking forward to a school football game, and maybe a party or two afterward. San Clemente had lost its game to Mater Dei, 17-7. Toward the end of the game, they headed for Calafia Beach County Park, an isolated parking lot more than a mile south of the city pier.

Someone had popped a tape of Rage Against the Machine into the car stereo. A few had some beer, although the teens say no one was drinking much. The conversation focused on where the parties were that night. Soon, a confrontation began between one of their friends and an estimated 15 youths in two other vehicles parked at the lot’s north end.

Witnesses later told sheriff’s investigators that one of Woods’ friends, Sterling Breckenridge, was leaving the beach with two others when he made a U-turn to talk to someone he thought was an acquaintance. But the act was misunderstood and started the fatal chain of events, according to court testimony.

Jessica Dautel, 17, and Paul Scharringhausen, 16, were riding with Breckenridge and said their friend had merely asked the occupants in the other vehicles if they knew of any parties in San Clemente or San Juan Capistrano, they said in an interview. But members of the group responded, “We’re San Clemente.”

It appeared they believed Breckenridge was taunting them by invoking the name of a rival gang’s turf, according to court testimony. Someone then hit Breckenridge on the head. The suspects told investigators that Breckenridge had made an obscene gesture at a San Clemente Varrio Chico gang member a day earlier.

Then, Breckenridge drove back to where his friends were parked and warned Woods, Malberg and the others that trouble was brewing and they should leave. As they were getting ready to depart, the teens later told police, they saw several members from the other group walking toward them with chains, baseball bats and a tennis racket.

The rocks and bottles were thrown as Woods and his friends, in three vehicles, drove fast toward the parking lot exit where the Latinos were congregated. Villalobos and his companions felt the vehicles were coming directly at them, they told their parents and sheriff’s investigators.

In the exchange, somebody reached into the back of a vehicle and threw the paint roller rod that hit Woods, who sat in the front passenger side of the first vehicle out of the parking lot.

The act ultimately killed Woods and instantly wounded a community.

Within days, hundreds of students and residents had rallies and packed City Council meetings, demanding an end to gang violence. At one demonstration, signs saying “Let’s Take Back Our Community” were displayed.

Some Latinos joined in the plea for anti-gang enforcement. And more recently, other Latinos, including Villalobos, have begun speaking out at public forums against what they call the racism in San Clemente.

Psychic Wounds

Arturo Norero, a private investigator hired by attorneys representing Villalobos and Juan Alcocer, who was also charged in the case, said that from what he has found, “this whole confrontation was started by the white kids.”

That is a claim Woods’ friends hotly protest.

“They can say whatever they want,” Dautel said. “And we’re just out there saying, ‘That’s not true.’

“I want to be able to go to trial and say our story, and be able to do whatever we can to put these guys in jail. I seriously don’t care what it takes,” she said.

Since the attack, Woods’ friends have struggled to cope with his death, and the cutting realization that the metal rod could have just as easily found them. Some say their school grades have suffered, some have sought counseling. And the beach, once a center of their social lives, has become a haunting reminder.

Malberg, like others in the car with Woods that night, has had violent dreams since the attack. Adding to her trauma, she also knew 15-year-old Angela Wagner, a San Clemente High School sophomore who was shot to death in December while she waited for her boyfriend in his car outside a Dana Point apartment complex.

“High school is supposed to be the best years of your life,” said Malberg, who has moved to Huntington Beach. “And all of a sudden two of my friends have already died.”

No one can believe Woods is gone.

“Sometimes I just think Steve is going to show up out of the middle of nowhere,” said Jennifer Maryhew, 15, who had become friendly with Woods last summer. “I wish I knew him longer.”

Maryhew was sitting in the back seat of the car and said she ducked when the glass shattered. A piece of wood, weighing about 8 pounds, passed inches from her head.

“On the way to the hospital, it was the scariest moment of my life. I didn’t know what would happen to Steve,” she said. “On the way to the hospital all I was thinking was, ‘This can’t be happening.’ ”

Maryhew said she still thinks a lot about that night, and finds herself crying. She smoked her first cigarette at the hospital, and has continued since then. She also stayed out of school for a couple weeks, wanting to avoid rumors and questions.

“I’ll never forget about it,” she said. “I miss him so much. Like I don’t even care what I do anymore. I miss his smile. He always had a smile.”

Kathy and Shellie Woods, Steve’s mother and sister, have maintained close ties with several of the youths who were with Steve that night. Some they met for the first time during vigils at local hospitals, where Steve remained in a coma before dying Nov. 9, having never regained consciousness.

The Woodses say it was not a “freak teen-age accident” that claimed Steve’s life, or that race has played any role in the way police and prosecutors have handled the case.

“I don’t blame these parents,” said Shellie. “Their kids made their own choice to be in a gang, to be there that night. And they were there with the intention to hurt. Whether they knew they were going to kill someone is beside the point. When you have rocks and chains and logs and tennis rackets, something is bound to happen.”

These days, the Woodses are turning their grief into action, and have joined with other local crime victims to form a coalition called Save the Children Eliminate Violence Everywhere.

“I’m just keeping busy,” Kathy Woods said. “But I have been thrown into a world I didn’t even know existed. I didn’t know there was this much tragedy out there.”

The Other Side

In the months since the confrontation, Dominga Marin Perez, an aunt and guardian of Alcocer, has been caught up in the tragedy.

“I’m thinking of a lot of things right now,” Marin said. “I’m confused what to do for him. Juan did nothing, at least that’s what he told me. He said he didn’t hit that kid. But the white kids tried to run them over and they retaliated by throwing things. And the white kids started it all.”

For the most part, the suspects’ parents, who speak mostly Spanish, are confused by the workings of the criminal justice system.

For Cipriano Penuelas, 46, each day his two sons, Hector, 17, and Saul, 18, are in court, he and his wife attend and keep a quiet vigil.

“Yes, I felt very sorry for this boy Steve Woods who died. But the police are not investigating this case as if the Mexican boys are innocent,” Penuelas said. “Their investigation has been done as if everyone is guilty.”