By JOSEPH KELLARD
The 18-year-old victim, who lives in Oceanside, was standing at the corner of Oceanside Parkway and Lenox Road on Aug. 11 when at least three men in their late teens and early 20s began beating him. He suffered multiple fractures to the bone around one eye, as well as a broken nose and sinus cavity. He spent three days in the hospital, during which three plates were inserted in his head, one by his eye socket and two others in his cheek bones.
³I¹m working on suspects and trying to identify them right now,² said Detective James Lorenzen of the 4th Squad, who added that there was little he could say while the incident is under investigation. ³I¹m still doing a lot of work on the case.²
Lorenzen did say the teen ³was assaulted by a minimum of three people,² and that the primary assailants may be relatives of Oceanside Parkway residents.
According to the victim¹s father, his son had just left a friend¹s house on neighboring Harvey Avenue to meet another friend at the corner of Oceanside Parkway and Lenox Road. They talked at the corner, close to a group of young men who were drinking. ³According to what he says,² the father said of his son, ³these guys started fighting on the corner. He told them to leave and that they shouldn¹t be fighting, and he told his friend he was going home. And when he turned and started to walk away, he got hit in the back of the head with a bottle or something, and that¹s all he remembers.²
The father said that according to his son¹s friend, the group of men kicked his son in the face while he was on the ground. ³That¹s probably how he got all the damage to his face,² his father said.
Lorenzen said that during his investigation, no one has told him the victim was hit with a bottle, and he suspects that there were no weapons involved in the assault.
In a police report released to the Herald on Aug. 13, the incident was described merely as ³harassment,² and the teen was said to have suffered ³a small laceration to his left eye during an assault.²
The boy¹s father said that after he asked police to visit his son in the hospital, they realized there was a lot more involved than just a cut to his head, and Lorenzen reopened the case on Aug. 14.
³I think it¹s a disgrace what happened,² the father said. ³That this happened at a party that was supposed to be a good time for all the people in the area, and for it to turn into something like this, was horrible. If those under-aged kids weren¹t allowed to be drinking, if that didn¹t happen, none of this would have happened.²
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
