Police chief learns son is suspect in disturbing assault on a Sikh man: ‘My stomach has been churning’

Union City Police Chief Darryl McAllister was mingling with residents Tuesday at National Night Out when members of the Sikh community brought a disturbing crime to his attention.

About 6 a.m. a day earlier, two men had attempted to rob a 71-year-old Sikh man as he walked by a park in Manteca, about 10 miles south of Stockton. When the man refused to cooperate, one of the suspects knocked the man to the ground — twice. The suspects left the man in the street as they began to walk away. Moments later, the main attacker ran back and kicked the man several times as he lay on the pavement. The confrontation was caught on nearby security cameras and spread on social media and the news. In the video, the suspect appears to spit on the man before running off.

“The greater Sikh community is devastated,” McAllister said in a statement. “They asked me to weigh in on how we could prevent this type of horrific crime in Union City.”

Later that night, McAllister got a call from the Manteca Police Deparment: The man in the security video was his son.

“Words can barely describe how embarrassed, dejected, and hurt my wife, daughters, and I feel right now,” McAllister wrote in a lengthy Facebook post Wednesday afternoon. “Violence and hatred is not what we have taught our children; intolerance for others is not even in our vocabulary, let alone our values…. My stomach has been churning from the moment I learned this news.”

Manteca police arrested Tyrone McAllister, along with the second suspect in the video, a 16-year-old male, Wednesday morning.

Investigators identified the younger McAllister by connecting several pieces. The night before the attack, police stopped a car for a traffic violation. The officer’s body camera footage shows McAllister in the car, as a passenger, wearing the same clothes seen in the attack, said Manteca Police Sgt. Stephen Schluer.

Also, McAllister had recently gotten out of jail, and investigators found Twitter and Snapchat posts indicating that he needed money and planned to rob people, Schluer said. He posted a photo in the same clothing seen in video of the attack.

The elder McAllister said his son had been estranged from his family for several months after he began to “lose his way” a couple of years ago with a bad crowd. The police chief said his son spent several months in juvenile hall, and later three more months in jail, for theft-related incidents.

“Since being released he has been wayward and has not returned to our family home for several months,” the chief, who helped Manteca police track down the 18-year-old in Modesto, wrote in his Facebook post.

“My family is shaken to the core,” McAllister continued. “His sisters (one corporate and the other about to start law school), are at a loss to understand any of this. It’s difficult for us to comprehend how one of three kids who grew up with the same parents, under the same roof, with the same rules and same values and character could wander so far astray. We simply don’t know why, or how we got here. In the eyes of the public, no matter the irrelevance to the incident, the fact remains that the father of the perpetrator of this despicable crime is a police chief, period.”

The younger McAllister, who investigators say was the primary aggressor, and the 16-year-old were arrested on suspicion of attempted robbery, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon. Police are investigating whether the attack amounts to a hate crime.

alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com

Twitter: @AleneTchek