Attack not racial, officials say

San Bernardino County sheriff’s officials investigating the assault of a 13-year-old mixed-race boy by three of his classmates in a schoolyard last month in Highland did not find evidence that the attack was racially motivated, officials said.

The boy’s parents had accused the three St. Adelaide Elementary School seventh-graders of looping a rope around their son’s neck and hurling racial epithets and basketballs at him during morning recess March 12.

The boy’s family didn’t know that racial slurs were uttered until one of the offending kids admitted it to the principal, said the boy’s father, James Gill, 41.

“We never even brought up the racial aspect. Our son didn’t tell us; he was embarrassed,” Gill said. He described the attackers as white and Hispanic.

Gill’s wife, DeVondra, then lodged a complaint about the alleged hate crime with the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department. The three boys -- two 12-year-olds and a 13-year-old -- were cited for misdemeanor battery, said Jodi Miller, a Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman.

But a sheriff’s investigation didn’t find evidence supporting allegations that the incident was racially motivated, said Father Howard Lincoln, spokesman for the Diocese of San Bernardino, which oversees St. Adelaide. A sheriff’s spokeswoman had confirmed that conclusion earlier this week, according to the San Bernardino Sun, but Miller declined to discuss the matter Friday.

“This incident involves four seventh-grade boys ages 12 and 13 who have played together and been friends since kindergarten,” Lincoln said. “Exactly what behavior occurred we don’t know, and we rely on the sheriff’s report, which we understand did not find evidence of a hate crime or racial epithets.”

School officials seemed perplexed that the boy’s parents were continuing to portray the incident as a hate crime.

The family reported the attack to school administrators the day after it happened. A school letter that had been approved by the victim’s family was sent out to parents explaining the incident, Lincoln said. The boys who were implicated were told to visit the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, research the history of discrimination and present a report to their class, he said. After an investigation, the school principal told the Gills that the boys received detention.

Diocese officials thought the issue had been resolved. But in the last week, church officials received a letter from a lawyer representing the victim’s family demanding that the school principal be fired. The letter also instructed the diocese to return tuition already paid and to pay for elementary, high school and college education expenses for the victim and his sister, who still attends the school. The boy who was attacked has withdrawn from the school, Lincoln said.

“The entire school community is disturbed by the degree this incident has been elevated, particularly after it appeared a resolution had been worked out between the parents of the children involved and the school administrators,” Lincoln said.

Gill said his family was disappointed with the way the school had treated the incident.

“We’re not calling for [the other kids’] expulsions, we’re calling for this school to treat it as seriously as it is and to make it right by the school and by our family,” he said.

Sheriff’s officials have submitted their findings to the San Bernardino County Probation Department’s juvenile division, which will make a final decision on whether to press hate crime or other charges against the three boys, Miller said.

sara.lin@latimes.com