Racial slur and rock are hurled at black family’s H.B. apartment in possible hate crime

Someone yelled a racial slur and threw a rock through a black family’s patio door early Tuesday in Huntington Beach, according to authorities.

Police say they’re investigating the incident as a hate crime.

Police got a call from the family around 12:30 a.m. reporting that someone had vandalized their apartment on the corner of Warner Avenue and Edwards Street, Huntington Beach police spokeswoman Jennifer Marlatt said.

A resident at the apartment told officers that he had been on his balcony when he saw a man riding a dark-colored mountain bike with a flashing headlight.

When the resident went inside, he noticed the flashing light was still there, so he went back outside to investigate, Marlatt said.

The resident saw the bike lying on the sidewalk and the bicyclist in a nearby flood channel bending over to pick something up, according to police.

It’s unclear whether the resident and bicyclist said anything to each other or even made eye contact, Marlatt said, but when the resident walked back inside, someone yelled a racial slur and a rock flew through the balcony’s glass door.

Marlatt said officers estimated the rock was thrown from about 15 feet away.

The resident called out to his mother upstairs, who looked outside to see the bicyclist riding away, according to police.

Police said the bicyclist was described as a white man in his early 20s or 30s, wearing a white T-shirt under a dark gray button-up shirt, blue jeans and a dark-colored hat.

According to KABC-TV/7, the family had recently moved to Huntington Beach.

The mother told the station that the man also threatened her son.

“What I heard yelled before I heard the big crash was, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ with the ‘N’ word,” she said.

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Jeremiah Dobruck, jeremiah.dobruck2@latimes.com

Twitter: @jeremiahdobruck