A 16-year-old boy is recovering after a brutal attack earlier this month in Dockweiler State Beach where he was beaten, kicked and stabbed multiple times before the group of suspects also robbed him.
Video footage of the violent Feb. 10 assault at Dockweiler is difficult to watch as the teen victim, according to his mother, is repeatedly pummeled and stomped by five to seven other teens.
“The doctor, like as soon as we walked through the door, they were like, ‘We didn’t know if your son was going to live,’ and I just started crying and I just went over there and held my son’s head and told him mommy’s not going anywhere,” the victim’s mother, identified only as Frankie, told KTLA.
Fortunately, the teen, a resident of Hawthorne, survived, but only after several tense days in the intensive care unit.
“He had a punctured lung, a concussion. They had to put a tube through his chest to suck all the blood out,” Frankie told KTLA’s Mary Beth McDade.
The teen’s mother said that her son went to the beach to see friends at a party that had been promoted on social media.
“My son was helping a friend,” she explained. “He helped get her up off the ground and then a guy just asked him to stop and then my son just wanted to help his friend. The guy asked him if he wanted to fight, and my son didn’t want to fight him.”
At that point, she says several other teens joined in the attack, stabbing her son three times while shouting racist and homophobic slurs, something she considers to be a hate crime.
Based on the references the victim’s attackers can be heard making about a gang in the video, she also believes the attack may have been a gang initiation.
“They was calling him all types of names and kicking him all in his head and his face, stabbing him,” Frankie said.
To make matters worse, she says videos of her son’s attack have been circulating at high schools in Hawthorne and nearby communities, where the suspects may attend schools.
Now, she wants to move her family out of the area to protect her son, who she says has a long road toward recovering both physically and mentally.
“I’m still at a loss for words knowing that somebody did this to him and they can still be out there looking for him,” she said.
Officials with the Los Angeles Police Department told KTLA that they are aware of the video footage and that an investigation into the attack is ongoing.
In the meantime, a GoFundMe has been organized for the family to help cover medical expenses and the cost of relocating.