Photo of Huntington Beach riot suspect goes viral
More than 3,700 Facebook users have now shared a photo of a man who allegedly smashed the front window of a downtown Huntington Beach bicycle store during Sunday night’s violence.
Users indicated they were sharing the photo with the hope of identifying the person, who is depicted yelling with his arms raised, as if in victory.
A second picture shows the same man, with his back turned, breaking through the glass with the end of a stop sign.
PHOTOS: Huntington Beach disturbance
“He will pay,” commented one user, Johnny Love, on the photograph of his face.
Some people said they had identified the person and passed the name along to authorities.
[Updated, 12:45 p.m. July 30: An earlier version of this post said some people had identified the man in the photo as Illario Niko Johnson. On Tuesday, Huntington Beach officials said Johnson is not the man in the picture, but is expected to be charged for involvement in the disturbance.]
Huntington Police Department officers have gone in search of that person to investigate further, said Ryan Hartzog, manager of Easyrider, the bike shop that was vandalized and looted.
“It’s a small world, you know. Somebody knows somebody that knows another person and that person is the guy who did it,” Hartzog said.
Photos captured the image of another young man trying to pull a bicycle from the smashed-out window as a shop employee tries to pull it back.
Hartzog said he was hiding inside the store with about a dozen other employees and friends when the window broke.
He said they could not see anything because of the flashing lights from cameras of people taking pictures and videotaping.
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Twitter: @emfoxhall
emily.foxhall@latimes.com
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