From the Dec. 28, 2005, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (and worst of all, it is true):Attackers sought in driver's beating'They were having fun,' shocked witness saysBy JOHN DIEDRICH and RAQUEL RUTLEDGE
Posted: Dec. 27, 2005
A 50-year-old Milwaukee man was dragged from a car he was driving and severely beaten Monday night by a group of at least 15 teens and young men after he honked at them to get out of the street they were blocking.
Witnesses said the attackers jumped off cars and did flips onto the man's head, laughed and blasted music as if they were having a "block party."
The victim, identified by family as Samuel McClain, suffered "severe head trauma" and was in critical condition late Tuesday at Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital in Wauwatosa, a hospital spokesman said. His family was gathered at Froedtert, awaiting word on McClain's fate. It was unclear whether he would survive.
"He really took a beating," said Anne E. Schwartz, Police Department spokeswoman.
Late Tuesday, one police source said some arrests had been made in the attack. But an official with the department’s detective bureau, Lt. Jeff Point, would not confirm that, saying only that several people were in police custody for questioning.
McClain's former wife and the mother of four of his children, Tina Bost, said McClain is a "happy-go-lucky man and a real nice person."
"I don't understand how that could happen to him," Bost said. "It's awful the way they did him."
Bost said McClain is remarried and also has children with his current wife.
Police are treating the case as an attempted homicide, Schwartz said. No one has been arrested. Detectives were searching for at least 15 participants, ages 16 to 23. They also were looking for two girls who apparently were stopped and harassed by the same group but made it through uninjured.
"We would love to chat with those girls," Schwartz said.
Police spent Tuesday night sweeping through the neighborhood with beefed up patrols, said Capt. Eric Moore.
"There is a significant saturation patrol in the area, and we're conducting a vigorous investigation," said Moore, adding that those arrested were being questioned in the beating.
McClain left his sister's home about 9 p.m. Monday, said his niece, Jennifer McClain. The family hadn't seen him in a couple of months, but he showed up for Christmas, she said. He has been working for a temporary service, she said, but wasn't sure where.
He said he was going to a friend's house on N. 36th St. and W. Hampton Ave., perhaps to play pool, she said.
As he pulled down 36th St. shortly before 11 p.m., he encountered a large group - as many as 30 people - standing in the street and blocking traffic, police said.
Minutes earlier, witnesses said, two girls encountered the same group, Schwartz said. The girl got out of her car and yelled at the group to let them through, which they did, she said.
When McClain honked, the group descended, dragging him from the car and into the street, police and witnesses say.
Jennifer McClain said her uncle is large, making it difficult to pull him from a car.
A 17-year-old visiting relatives nearby said he called police when he saw the group grab McClain and start beating him. The boy didn't want his name published for fear that the attackers would retaliate. He said he watched the whole beating, peering through the blinds of a bedroom window.
"They just started stomping on him, beating him," he said. "They were having fun, like it was normal, like it was an everyday thing."
They were drinking, laughing and playing music, he said.
"I was in shock," he said.
Britney King and her two sisters said they saw the attackers doing flips and cartwheels off cars onto McClain as he lay in the street.
"It looked like they were having a block party," King said. "They sounded like they were having a good time."
King said she and her sisters did not call police.
"It's just not me to call police," said LaToya King. "It would not cross my mind. In places like this, police don't come fast enough and solve anything. People here don't trust the police."
When police arrived, they found McClain in the street and that the crowd had dispersed, Schwartz said.
Mayor Tom Barrett called on the community to help solve the crime.
"We cannot put a police officer on every corner and midway down the block," Barrett said at a news conference at the scene of the beating.
"We need people to step forward especially in a crime like this. . . . If the community steps forward, we can get the people who perpetrated this crime off the streets," he said.
He encouraged anyone with information to call police at (414) 935-7360 or, to report it anonymously, to call the WeTip hotline at (800) 78-CRIME.
Barrett said police presence in the neighborhood is not the issue.
"It's a societal issue," he said. "We have to create hope (for young people), but at the same time we can't condone the violence."
Some community members backed Barrett's approach and challenged families to get more involved in the lives of their sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, siblings and cousins.
"The police have worked endlessly, day and night, to provide us the safest environment they can at 36th and Hampton," said Keith Bailey, owner of Bailey's Dry Cleaning and Laundry Service, just around the corner from the site of the beating. "The police can only do so much. We have lost accountability of our family members."
Last year, there were four mob-style beatings in four weeks in Milwaukee, leaving one man dead and three other people seriously injured. None of the beatings was related.
David Rutledge, a 54-year-old man with schizophrenia, was robbed and beaten July 4, 2004; he later died. Six teens were charged. One was convicted and one is awaiting trial; charges against the others were dropped.
Four days after the Rutledge beating, a 14-year-old boy was kicked, punched and hit in the head with a piece of lumber after he had exchanged words with a girl on a playground. She summoned older relatives, suspected of beating the boy.
Two weeks later, a Milwaukee man was beaten by a group of men after a girl in the neighborhood falsely accused him of indecently touching her.
And on July 29, 2004, a 16-year-old boy and his brothers were beaten by a group armed with bats, bottles, sticks and socks stuffed with canned food.
In 2002, Milwaukee drew national attention after the fatal beating of 36-year-old Charlie Young Jr. Young was pummeled by at least a dozen people, including children as young as 10, who used shovels, tree limbs and other weapons.
Police are looking for two suspect cars in the McClain beating: a black, late- model four-door Mercedes with a broken-out back window covered with plastic and a 1980s Mercury station wagon with imitation wood side paneling and a license that includes either "617 or 627," Schwartz said.
jdiedrich@journalsentinel.comWeasel's thoughts: If you ever come across a group of teens standing in the middle of a Milwaukee city street, fuck 'em. Rev your engine and run the little bastards over. If you try and warn them, they'll simply use you as a human punching bag.And people wonder why I have no faith in humanity.--Weasel, "Two words. Speed. Bumps. End of problem."
