Teen named in suit against Lunada Bay Boys charged with racist beat-down…
A new and interesting development is coming out of the Lunada Bay saga as a named defendant in the ongoing class-action is being sued for participating in an unrelated hate crime.
In September, 2015, the Golden Lion Liquor store in Palos Verdes Estates was robbed by three teenage boys. Two of them proceeded to attack the owner, Shuja Oberoi, with baseball bats, while the third served as lookout.
According to The Daily Breeze:
The crime occurred about 8:45 p.m. Sept. 11 as Oberoi worked at Golden Lion Liquor, a store he opened in 2000. One of the boys, a 16-year-old from Palos Verdes Estates, walked inside first as a lookout. He told detectives the intention was to rob the store of money, police said.
After he walked out, two 17-year-olds, one from Rancho Palos Verdes and one from the unincorporated area on The Hill, barged into the store, police said. Both wore Halloween skeleton masks and black gowns and carried metal baseball bats.
Outside of the community sanctioned harassment of outsiders at the nearby beaches, there is little violent crime in the immediate area. Local residents were shocked and rallied around the store owner, raising $7000 to help with medical expenses.
The three teens were quickly arrested but there was more trouble to follow for the fine young man who played lookout.
Almost two months later, the boy who served as the lookout was named in an unrelated class-action lawsuit filed against the Lunada Bay Boys which seeks to break the stronghold of multigenerational surfers long accused of threatening and harassing outsiders who try to share the waves.
Anthony Falangetti, the attorney defending the boys and their parents in the lawsuit, claims the nationality of Oberoi is an “unfortunate coincidence.” No doubt the boys would have viciously beaten the owner regardless of his nationality.
But Oberoi’s lawsuit alleges otherwise.
[Oberoi’s lawsuit] claims that the father of one of the older boys flies a Confederate flag at his home and “regularly used racially derogatory terms to describe African-American neighbors in the presence of his son throughout his son’s early childhood.”
The boy used racial slurs toward his neighbors as early as the age of 3, the lawsuit alleges, and his father used “similarly derogatory language to describe Muslims.”
The suit also accuses the father of allowing the older teens to sell narcotics in his home, and says he also failed to provide supervision and guidance for his son, whom he knew had a history of criminal and violent behavior.
The Daily Breeze is declining to name any of the boys who attacked Oberoi, and I suppose I should follow suit. However, because the lookout is named in the Lunada Bay class-action, it would be relatively easy for anyone with access to the complaint to puzzle it out using a simple process of elimination.
And, what do you know? You can read that very same document HERE.
