Girl Badly Hurt in Racial Attack With Bats, Glass

ANAHEIM —  Amber Jefferson, a 15-year-old freshman cheerleader at Santiago High School in Garden Grove, lies in pain this weekend at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center. Her face is battered beyond recognition--she cried when she finally looked in a mirror after four days. Her jaws are wired shut, the result of 10 hours of surgery to sew together the entire left side of her head.

She doesn’t remember everything. Just the men in the group yelling “Niggers!” the two baseball bats, and being hit, first on her kneecaps to knock her down, then on her head.

The attack on Amber and four others began just after midnight Tuesday in the parking lot of a condominium complex at 9166 Cerritos Ave., just east of Magnolia Avenue. What happened is still under investigation by the Anaheim Police Department, which has not yet made any arrests.

The victims say the attack was racially motivated, and that Amber Jefferson, daughter of a white mother and black father, was the most innocent person in the entire group.

“A white girl is seen with a black girl and two black boys and someone has to pay a price for it,” said Katie Jefferson, Amber’s aunt and a political activist in Los Angeles. “This is the 1990s. When does it end?”

Amber’s father, William Jefferson, a Vons supermarket manager from Garden Grove, said he is still trying to learn what happened. But not, he insisted, for vengeance against his daughter’s attackers.

“When they brought her in with her head split open like that, I told God that if he would just let my daughter live, I would take all revenge out of my heart,” Jefferson said at the hospital Saturday.

Amber Jefferson almost didn’t make it. Doctors told the family that she nearly lost too much blood to be saved by surgery, performed by a neurosurgeon and two plastic surgeons at Kaiser early Tuesday morning. She had been taken first to Humana Hospital-Huntington Beach, but was transferred that same morning to Kaiser. Though she is out of mortal danger now, doctors say it could be two years before she has muscle control of the left side of her face, which is marred by a thick scar from the top of her head down to her neck.

What happened?

Amber spoke briefly in an interview from her hospital bed Saturday:

“They were yelling racial things, and they started hitting me and punching me. I don’t know why. I didn’t do anything to them.”

The interview was cut short because Amber became too upset to discuss it.

“She’s been in such terrible pain,” her mother, Cody Donnelly of Santa Ana, tearfully explained. “She’s such a beautiful little girl. How could they do this?”

According to Amber Jefferson’s friends at the scene, here is what happened:

Amber was visiting a longtime friend, Kimberly Armstrong, the daughter of Mary Armstrong, who lives in the condo complex. Sometime after dark Amber asked if she could go out with a friend of Kimberly’s, Michelle Schimmer, 16, of Anaheim. They were joined by Matt Stewart, 19, who lives in the complex; Rick Jones, 17, of Anaheim and his cousin, Lewis Jones, 19, visiting him from Oakland.

The group drove down the street for snacks and soft drinks. When they returned, Michelle walked up to a girl she knew in the complex, and they began arguing. The girl was soon joined by two white males armed with baseball bats, one a teen-ager who lived in the complex, the other in his late 20s, who was visiting from Australia. Several other people gathered around, but were not participants.

The two Jones cousins said they got out of the car and joined the girls and Matt after they saw the baseball bats.

“We were just telling everyone to chill out,” Lewis Jones said.

Amber’s mother said her daughter told police that someone in the other group had asked Michelle: “What are you doing with these niggers?” Michelle said she was too upset by the assault to remember all that was said.

Several of the victims said the first act of violence came when the Australian suddenly began swinging the bat. By this time the father of the teen-ager with the other bat joined in and was also yelling racial slurs.

Matt Stewart, a Latino and one of the five who was attacked, said none of the victims did anything to provoke the attack. “Those guys had decided they were going to take out everybody who was with Michelle,” he said.

Ralph Jones said he tried to grab the bat from the Australian. Others said the Australian had begun the attack before Jones acted.

The stories conflict somewhat after that. Ralph Jones said he finally managed to get the bat away from the Australian. Matt Stewart remembered getting beat up near his car. Michelle remembered getting hit and one of the attackers trying to strangle her before she broke free.

They all agreed that Matt helped Amber, with her injured knees, to the safety of the car. But she left the car to try to get one of the Jones cousins to help Michelle, who was under attack. That’s when the teen-ager armed with a bat went into his home and came back with a heavy shard of glass from a mirror.

“He threw it hard, right at Amber, who was already down,” Lewis Jones said.

Amber’s family said doctors at first believed her assailant must have run the shard of glass down her face like a knife. But the witnesses said that the assailant threw the shard.

“It was hard to believe anyone could have thrown it with enough force to cut her open so bad,” Amber’s father said.

Amber’s mother called Lewis Jones “my little hero.”

Jones held Amber in his arms and kept the two sides of her head wound held together until paramedics arrived. He said he told her over and over, “Please don’t die, Amber.”

But even as he spoke, he said, he did not expect her to survive because her wounds looked so bad.

“I ain’t no hero,” he said. “I just cared about a friend.”

All five victims were injured, though only Amber was hospitalized. The irony, they said, is that she was the only one in the group who said nothing at all to the other side.

“She was just trying to get away,” Lewis Jones said.

Though the police would not discuss the incident Saturday, the Jefferson family said they have been told that the teen-ager whose father helped in the melee has fled town. The Australian, who was scheduled to return home this weekend, has agreed to remain until the investigation has been completed.

Mary Armstrong, who was hosting Amber as a house guest, said the Australian called her to tell her his side of what happened: He said he began swinging only because he was afraid of the black men, according to Armstrong.

But Armstrong said she confronted the father of the teen-ager, and he claimed they did nothing wrong.

“We’re all really devastated by this,” Armstrong said. She noted that the condominium complex has a mix of ethnic groups and there have been no known incidents of racial violence before.

“I really thought (the Australian) was a pleasant young man,” she said. “I just can’t picture him out there with a baseball bat. I guess you never really know what people will do.”

Amber’s room at Kaiser is overflowing with stuffed animals and get-well gifts from friends. The other victims have been to see her every day. The cheerleader coach at Santiago High School, Andrea Schnepp, has assured Amber the school will hold a place for her on the squad until she can return.

Amber’s father said he has been so focused on his daughter’s recovery that he has not had time to reflect on the racial implications of the attack.

“Amber has been exposed to a few racial things before, but certainly nothing like this,” Jefferson said. “I had no idea she wouldn’t be safe when I let her stay over there.”

Amber’s mother has been at her hospital bedside almost constantly since the incident.

“I’m a white woman with a black daughter,” she said through tears. “But have I been so cloistered, I didn’t know people like that were out there.”