Nathanael Rowe

The doped up cholo raced through our skateside parking lot in his green Ford Explorer as fast as he could.  After almost hitting a couple kids, the skaters started yelling at him as he proceeded down the alley.  I walked up to see what was going on when I saw 2 women who apparently just got out of this car, walking towards us yelling at the kids.  Then the vehicle raced backwards almost hitting his own 2 passengers.

When he got back into our parking lot he jumped out of his car and started swinging at one of the kids at the park.  The man was about 5′8″ 150 pounds, and violently angry for some reason.  As soon as he started to swing my first thoughts were about whether or not this guy had some kind of weapon or not.  Once I saw he was only using his fists I grabbed him and threw him to the ground.  Somehow I landed on the ground with him, and I was trying to put him in a choke hold to keep him from attacking more kids.   As I was trying to get my arms around his neck, I felt him attempting to chew through my arm.  It was about this same time that a large shadow came over me, it was one of the ladies he almost ran over, and she was screaming “Get off my man!” as she started to swing at me.

I yelled back, “I’m just trying to keep him from hurting any of the kids.”  That distraction was all he needed to be back up and his car searching for a weapon.  He quickly turned around with a crow bar, and started running and swinging at the same kid he originally went after.  Turns out the 16 year old kid got quite a few good hits on his now bloodied face, and he was looking for vengeance.  I yell to all the kids, around 35 of them, “Someone call 911 now!”  I then try to take a mental image of the license plate.  One of the women from the vehicle sees what I am doing and stands in front of it.  I tell her “It’s too late, I got it, so you better leave now because the cops are coming right now.”

She yells back something about me being a big redneck, and then runs into her vehicle, along with the enraged thug. I couldn’t help but laugh at that comment.

I started to walk towards the kid making the phone call to ensure that the police were on their way.  While I am walking away the lady by the truck is yelling, “Lets just get the gun, Lets get the gun!”  I turn around to see one of the women right behind me about to swing a skateboard at me.  I step towards her quickly and clench my fist.  I was about to hit a woman for the first time in my life.  She dropped the skateboard once she saw I was about to fight back, and went back to their car and took off.

We brought the kids inside to wait for the West Long Beach Police, but something was taking them a while.  More than 45 minutes have passed and so I take a look outside, and ask one of the pedestrians if they have seen any police around.  One guy answers back that there are some cars just down the street.  My thought is that maybe they have grabbed this guy, so I walk towards them.  There are three police cars parked about 200 ft away from our church, all of which were responding to a traffic accident there.  I asked them if they had gotten a call about a man attacking some kids.  One officer looks and says someone should be on their way.  OK, I say disappointingly, and I turn to walk back to the church.  Why are there 3 cars for a traffic accident, and no one at our church in response to a crazy man attacking some kids?  It takes another 45 minutes before an officer finally shows up, over an hour and a half from the original call.

He takes the report, we send the kids home, and I head to the ER for my bite wound.  I spent 4 hours there, until finally I saw a doctor, had some tests run, got a tetanus shot, and got some antibiotics.  Turns out human bites are actually pretty dangerous.

In the end, just another typical night of ministry in West Long Beach.