Girl home after trial; return is bittersweet

After 87 days in Juvenile Hall, the sole defendant cleared in the Halloween hate crime trial went home on Friday to her family’s small apartment in North Long Beach and cleaned her room.

The 12-year-old said she did not sleep well her first night home because the bunk beds her two older sisters slept in were empty. She’s usually the last one talking, off to the side in her roll-out cot, as the others nod off, she said.

But her sisters, older brother and five friends were convicted Friday of beating three young white women Oct. 31. For eight of the 10 defendants, Judge Gibson Lee found the beating was committed out of racial hatred. One defendant was convicted only of assault. They are set to be sentenced within the next two weeks.

The 12-year-old’s acquittal was a footnote to the prosecution’s overall victory. The evidence against her was a single statement that a witness saw her “throwing newspapers around at the girls.”

The trial and her three months in custody, she said, have shaken her sense of fairness. The Times is withholding her name because she is a minor. The 10 youths say they had nothing to do with the attack, which left one of the victims with multiple facial fractures.

Prosecutors accused Anthony and Antoinette Ross, who both turned 18 while in custody, of punching two of the women in the head and Anthony of kicking them. The other sister, a minor, threw pumpkins at the women, one witness said. Blood was found on her pants, the prosecution said.

In an interview at her home Saturday, the 12-year-old said she didn’t want to talk about the trial or Halloween night. The mother of one of the victims, reached by phone, said she was too exhausted to talk.

The day before, the 12-year-old had sobbed at the verdict; she did not want to leave her sisters and brother behind. Even though they were detained at separate juvenile facilities, they spent every weekday together at Los Angeles County Superior Court in Long Beach, braiding one another’s hair, doing imitations of the various attorneys.

The beatings took place on the corner of Bixby Road and Linden Avenue, in a well-to-do neighborhood in Bixby Knolls known for its haunted houses, generous candy offerings and Halloween displays that draw hundreds of youths every year. Dist. Atty. Andrea Bouas alleged that the youths -- nine female and one male -- began throwing pumpkins and lemons at three passing white women and then pounced on them when someone yelled that they hated white people.

The youths said that they were on the corner with dozens of other people, but that none of them took part.

Anthony testified that he helped break up one of the beatings, then drove away with the group after a man dispersed the mob. They were stopped by police in a supermarket parking lot shortly thereafter and arrested when a witness and two of the victims told police they recognized them as among the assailants.

Lee agreed there was enough evidence on all but the 12-year-old. There are no juries in Juvenile Court.

The girl’s mother was crushed that Lee found three of her other children guilty. As sheriff’s deputies ushered her and other family members out of the courtroom, her oldest daughter cried, “Mama, Mama.”

“I couldn’t do anything,” she said. “I just wanted go over there and say, ‘Come on, let’s go.’ But I couldn’t take them with me.”

The oldest of her seven children, Kion Coley, said it has been difficult to hear his siblings called racists and gang members in court and his mom described as a bad parent on talk radio. Bouas accused Anthony of being a Crips gang member and the minors’ families of trying to intimidate a witness, whose car was rammed while she was testifying. They deny both allegations.

“I’ve never been in jail. I’ve always worked,” Coley said. “That’s how we’ve been raised.”

One of his brothers runs track at USC. Anthony wants to be an attorney -- even more so since the trial.

The 12-year-old’s mother, a single, stay-at-home parent, said she has always been strict, driving her kids to church and track meets, making sure they do their homework and keep the house clean. She said she gets on her youngest daughter’s case if she gets a C in class. “That’s when I know she’s just not paying attention.”

She watched other children in the neighborhood get involved with gangs but never worried that her children would. “They chose one path, my kids chose another,” she said.

The parents called one another, terrified, when their children didn’t come home Halloween night. The mother said she just sat on the couch looking out the blinds. “Every car, every light, my head was spinning,” she said. “They know not to have [the 12-year-old] out like this.”

One of the other parents called police to file a missing-persons report and was told the children were in custody.

Juvenile Hall was eye-opening to the youths, the mother said. “They were with girls their age who had tattoos of their pimps’ names on their necks,” she said.

The 12-year-old was taken to Sylmar, away from her sisters, who were in Downey. Because most of the juveniles were older and “bossy,” the girl said, she kept to herself. “I mainly stayed in my room because I was scared.”

She read Harry Potter books, “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” the Bible. When her mother visited, she made sure the girl kept her room tidy, she said.

On Jan. 2, when the prosecution rested its case, her attorney, Tom Harmon, made an impassioned plea to the judge to dismiss the charges for lack of evidence. Lee swiftly denied the motion. Now, given the acquittal, the 12-year-old’s mother wonders why she wasn’t home more than three weeks ago.

Several civil rights activists Saturday called for a U.S. Justice Department probe of how the youths were arrested, held without bail and tried on hate crime charges.

“We have felt from Day 1 that this was gross legal overkill,” activist and writer Earl Ofari Hutchinson said. “No one has ever denied that there was an assault. But we have always denied -- and still do -- that this was a racially motivated” act.

Noting that the convictions will be appealed, he says he will urge Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley to release the youths pending a final resolution.

Sandi Gibbons, Cooley’s spokeswoman, said Saturday that it would be improper to publicly discuss the incarceration of the youths with the sentencing pending.

“We presented the evidence to the court. The court ruled on the evidence. There is really nothing else to say,” Gibbons said.

On Saturday, the 12-year-old took a bath and hugged the family’s two poodles -- Tinker and Pongo -- who followed her wherever she went. As she cleaned her room, she laughed at the words her 16-year-old sister had stenciled on her bunk -- “I love Brad Pitt” -- and said she was happy he had dropped Jennifer Aniston. Also stenciled on the bed was a note for their grandfather, who died last year. “I love u grandpa 4-ever.”

Her mother said her father had helped raise her children and would have been in court every day. “He would have thrown his cane at the judge.”

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joe.mozingo@latimes.com

Times staff writers Greg Krikorian and Jessica Garrison contributed to this report.