Witnesses describe attack on Black man in Pismo Beach: ‘It all happened so quick’
On the night of Wednesday, April 7, just after 7 p.m., a man visiting downtown Pismo Beach was attacked and beaten by four men while waiting to get into a restaurant with his girlfriend and her family, witnesses say.
The man was Black. The attackers appeared to be white.
One witness, the father of the girlfriend of the man who was attacked, felt the incident was racially motivated and said so in a bombshell Letter to the Editor published in The Tribune last week.
“I’ve never witnessed a hate crime ever in my life at 65, and hope I never do again,” Ed Atkins told The Tribune in an exclusive interview following the letter’s publication. “There’s something about them that are a little worse than, you know, a regular crime when it’s just all out of hate. There’s something about it.”
Atkins’ letter sparked an investigation into the now weeks-old attack and a decisive response from the city: We will not tolerate this.
It also raised questions. How could this happen in Pismo Beach’s most heavily trafficked area in full view of everyone, and no one stepped forward until now?
Now Atkins and another witness are speaking out to share more about that night and what happened.
‘Traumatic’ attack started as family birthday celebration in Pismo Beach
Atkins traveled to Pismo Beach from his home in Vallejo and was looking forward to spending the weekend for his 65th birthday celebration.
Besides being a chance to return to the Central Coast, where he has fond memories from his days at Cal Poly, it was also going to be an opportunity to reconnect with his daughter, who he hadn’t seen in several years.
“It was a happy occasion,” Atkins said.
Then it turned.
As the group — Atkins, his daughter and her boyfriend, Eli — was turning the corner onto Pomeroy Avenue next to Pismo Bowl, they noticed a group of young men hanging out on the corner.
Atkins said one shouted at them — saying something about Eli, who is Black, needing to “cut that kinky hair.”
“They were taunting him,” Atkins said, “which felt like there was no cause for that except all I could think of is that he’s walking with my white daughter.”
Atkins said the group of men then followed them down the street as they were heading toward Brad’s Restaurant, where Atkins had planned to eat that night.
Finally, he had enough and told the men to “lay back and find something constructive to do,” Atkins said.
The men wandered off and Atkins went into the Brad’s entrance to try to get a table. Then he noticed out the window that the group was once again coming closer.
“I was trying to get somebody at Brad’s attention so we can try to get into the place, but before I could get anybody’s attention, they’re there confronting Eli again,” he said. “Again I went out in the street to talk to them, to try to back them off, and before I knew it — it all happened so quick — they just started, you know, throwing punches at him.”
Atkins said one guy was holding Eli while the others took turns punching him while Eli struggled to get free and fight back. Eli’s face was quickly bloodied and bruised by the attack.
“At this point, it’s just kind of over the top and surreal,” Atkins said. “I can’t think at a time like that, but I should have called the police. I should have, I should have done something. But it’s so traumatic, and it happens all so fast.”
In the middle of that surreal moment, Atkins did say he noticed people casually walking by, continuing about their day like normal and not intervening.
Then just as suddenly as it started, it was over.
“When I look back on it, it’s probably between five and 10 seconds of wild punches,” Atkins said. “In five or 10 seconds a lot can be done by four guys.”
Restaurant manager says fight was sudden and fast
At the same time Atkins was attempting to get a table at Brad’s, its night manager, Chuck Lloyd, was walking back to the restaurant from a visit with a local taffy shop owner.
Lloyd said as he got closer to the restaurant, he saw an argument brewing outside between a couple and some men in their late teens to early 20s, so he sped up to try to defuse the situation.
“Then it just escalated from there,” he said in an interview with The Tribune on Monday. “I just saw them arguing and next thing you know, punches being thrown.”
Lloyd said he immediately went inside to call the police, but by the time he was off the call, the group of young men had fled.
“It was fast,” he said. “It happened: boom, yep, yep and gone.”
Lloyd said from the brief view he had of the incident, it seemed like a bunch of young men wanting to pick a fight with someone, but he added that he did not see any of the interactions or conversations that led up to it.
He also noted that during the fight, Eli’s girlfriend was saying that the group had been following them and harassing them.
When Lloyd returned to the front of the restaurant, he said he found Atkins, Atkins’ daughter and Eli still outside. A waiter was giving them ice for Eli’s eye where he had “a shiner” and a cut, Lloyd said.
The three didn’t stick around long, Lloyd said. A police officer arrived a few minutes after they left, and Lloyd said he informed the officer what had happened but since nobody was around, there was little to be done.
It wasn’t until last week, after the letter was published, that an officer once again contacted Lloyd to get his eyewitness account.
“I’ve been working here for four years at the restaurant,” Lloyd said. “You know, (the area) is so busy with people up and down. It’s just, it’s ... you don’t see that at all. At all.”
Brad’s Restaurant office manager Debra Rivera said Lloyd called her immediately after the incident to share what had happened.
“My thought was, ‘I hope the man was OK, and thank God they didn’t bring this into our restaurant and none of our employees were harmed,’ ” she told The Tribune on Friday. “This isn’t something that we usually see downtown, especially since Harry’s has been closed for the past year.”
‘Everyone was fairly traumatized,’ father says after attack
After the attack, Atkins said they returned to their hotel, where Eli went to his room and didn’t want to talk about what had happened.
Atkins said Eli had some trouble breathing later, and he believed he may have broken his nose in the fight. Eli’s face was also bruised and swollen, with cuts on both sides of his face and a black eye.
The next morning, the group left the Seacrest Hotel early, eager to be done with the entire weekend.
“Everyone was fairly traumatized,” Atkins said. “My daughter, you know, who’s actually been with him a couple times when this has kind of happened before, she was very traumatized by it. She said, ‘The pivotal thing in our relationship, Dad, it’s like this is gonna be a hard thing if being with me causes this.’ “
For the next several days, the attack weighed heavily on Atkins, until he finally decided he needed to do something about it.
So he opened up his email and penned a letter to the editor to The Tribune, he said, hoping to draw attention to the incident.
That same day he also contacted the Pismo Beach Police Department to make an official police report but was told without Eli’s statement, it would be difficult to do much in the case.
Atkins said Eli does not want to talk about the incident, much less make an official statement to the police because he fears retribution if his identity were to become public.
“You must understand he grew up in an area where race crimes are frequent. He has experienced racial bias and aggression most of his life,” Atkins wrote in a separate email to The Tribune. “As a young Black man, he also has little faith in law enforcement, or that filing a report will help him in any way. That is his experience, and as much as I would like to have him file a report, I must respect his wishes.”
Attack happened in middle of busy Pismo Beach street during dinner, witnesses say
One big question surrounding the incident has been why nobody other than Atkins was talking about the attack, which happened in the middle of a heavily trafficked area of Pismo Beach, right around the dinner rush.
Pismo Beach around 7 p.m. on a spring evening isn’t typically devoid of life.
Diners sit in outdoor parklets enjoying their meals at the handful of restaurants along Pomeroy. People are constantly walking up and down that stretch on their way down to the beach and the newly redesigned Pismo Pier plaza. Cars line up along the road to park.
Lloyd said diners inside Brad’s Restaurant definitely noticed what was going on.
“I mean, the people that were in there, sitting down and watching it happen, were kind of nervous,” he said. “You don’t want it to come into the restaurant, which it did not. It was just outside on the sidewalk.”
Atkins said he remembered people passing by as the fight was happening, describing the street as “medium busy” with a “casual flow of traffic going both ways.”
So why did this not come to the public’s attention sooner?
Atkins himself said that afterwards he felt it was strange more people hadn’t stepped forward to report it.
“It’s hard for me to believe no one really stopped to say that they’d seen that,” he said. “In a way, in hindsight I just went, ‘How come nobody saw that and said so?’ I mean, it was visible.”
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Police, city investigating attack as potential hate crime
When Pismo Beach launched its investigation into the incident on Thursday, one of the primary things the city said its detectives were hoping for was witnesses to step forward with video or photo evidence.
“Racism, violence and hate are not welcome in Pismo Beach,” the city said in a statement. “Those that violate the community will be found and prosecuted.”
If anyone has photos, videos, or other information related to this incident, they are asked to contact the Police Department at 805-773-2208.
Meanwhile, Pismo Beach City Manager Jim Lewis said the city is very serious about getting to the bottom of what happened, but noted that they need additional information to move forward.
“Until additional information comes forward, we do not have more we can share,” he said in a statement to The Tribune on Wednesday.
Atkins is also hoping for a resolution to the ordeal.
“I just hope the community comes together and is on the watch for this and can squash it before it has a chance to get off the ground,” he said. “That was my whole hope in just writing the letter, that people will notice that this had happened in our area, and that we should now watch out for it and be on the lookout.”
He also hoped that people might in the future take note of incidents like this and be willing to step in and help if they see something similar, rather than ignoring it.
“I would hope that in the future people actually take notice they saw something like that and ... you know, come to the support of people,” he said.
This story was originally published April 28, 2021 at 3:15 PM with the headline "Witnesses describe attack on Black man in Pismo Beach: ‘It all happened so quick’."
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