Beaten Woman Says She Wasn’t Fleeing Deputies

At that crucial moment--in a decision that may define the rest of her life--Alicia Sotero Vasquez decided not to run when Riverside sheriff’s deputies approached the truck in which she was riding Monday.

“I was too afraid to run away,” Sotero, who had previously identified herself as Leticia Gonzalez Gonzalez, said in an interview from her hospital bed Wednesday. “When the truck stopped [on the Pomona Freeway], everyone was screaming, ‘Run! Run!’ But I didn’t. I said to officers, ‘Estoy aqui’ [I’m here]. I didn’t run. I didn’t do anything wrong. I merely came here to find work.”

What happened to her next was beamed around the world after TV helicopters captured the drama.

She was clubbed by a Riverside sheriff’s deputy, pulled by the hair and shoved violently against the truck in an incident that triggered outrage here and in her native Mexico.

Her companion, Enrique Funes Flores, who came with her from the Mexican state of Michoacan, was also clubbed half a dozen times by sheriff’s deputies.

“[The deputies] used vicious, hateful words,” Sotero said. “I don’t speak English, but I could feel their hate. It didn’t matter to them that I didn’t understand them. They beat me. . . . They beat me. They hit me on my legs. They hit me in the back, where it still hurts. They grabbed my hair.

“I don’t know why they did what they did. I did nothing wrong.”

Civil rights attorneys said they expect to file a claim against the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department on behalf of Sotero and Funes as a result of the beating. If the claim is rejected, the lawyers said, they will sue in federal court.

The incident occurred at the end of a high-speed chase in which the driver of the pickup tried to ram two cars to divert the attention of pursuing deputies.

While Sotero recuperated Wednesday, immigration authorities released 18 others, including Funes, who were captured after the freeway chase. They were released to the custody of the Mexican Consulate and kept away from reporters who waited outside the INS detention center at the downtown Federal Building.

Sotero, 32, spoke Spanish during a brief interview in a Los Angeles-area hospital, which her lawyers asked The Times not to identify. She was admitted Tuesday night after her release by federal immigration authorities.

Her lawyer, David Ross of Los Angeles, said his client was still in a great deal of pain from the beating. She was assisted by Ross when she walked out of the Immigration and Naturalization Service detention center Tuesday, and was clearly in pain when she appeared later in the day at a boisterous, sometimes-chaotic news conference at the Mexican Consulate.

She was receiving round-the-clock attention at the hospital’s intensive care unit, and officials indicated that she may be hospitalized for several more days.

She was wearing a white hospital gown and showed marks that appeared to have come from the beating on her arms and legs. Hospital officials said she was in stable condition but was dehydrated and receiving treatment.

During the interview, Sotero said she did not understand what the fuss over her was all about.

She has heard of Rodney G. King, whose 1991 beating by Los Angeles police officers was captured on videotape, but she doesn’t see any link between her case and his.

Relatives in Mexico are aware of her role in the “Mexican Rodney King case,” as some south of the border now refer to it. But they haven’t told Sotero’s mother, who has a heart condition, about it.

On the advice of Ross and lawyer Jorge Gonzalez of Los Angeles, she declined to answer any questions about the events leading up to her apparent illegal entry into the United States.

She said she supported her two children, an 11-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son, by working in a clothing factory in Michoacan that recently closed. She received some money from the factory owners and supplemented that with odd jobs.

“But it wasn’t enough money, and I decided to come here,” she said.

It was her first attempt to enter the United States, but she did something a lot of illegal immigrants do if they are captured: She gave authorities a false name. Ross said she was afraid to give her real name because of what might happen to her family as a result of her capture.

After the interview, Ross said Sotero told him: “I was so scared [after the capture] that I gave them a false name. I couldn’t think of another name except Gonzalez, so I said it twice.”

So, for her first two days in the media spotlight, Sotero was known as Leticia Gonzalez Gonzalez. Late Wednesday, the Mexican Consulate revealed her real name.

Ross said she concealed her birth certificate, bearing her true name, in her pants. He took her explanation for giving the alias as reasonable, Ross said, adding: “She was afraid.”

Sotero made it clear that she wants to drift back into the anonymity that many illegal immigrants seek when they come to this country. But she also doesn’t want the world to forget what happened on the Pomona Freeway.

“It was a horrible experience,” she said, concluding the interview. “I didn’t do anything wrong, and they beat me. I thought they were going to kill me.”