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Police Blotter (Crime News) of Sunnyvale |
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Four people were arrested on hate crime charges after allegedly attacking people of Indian descent early Saturday morning on Castro Street. But police continue to puzzle over what connection, if any, the attack may have with a shooting that same night in East Palo Alto.
Mountain View police are still looking for two to four more suspects in the alleged hate crime attack, which happened on the 200 block of Castro Street at around 1:30 a.m. on Feb. 21. Meanwhile, East Palo Alto police say the incident may be connected to a shooting that happened the same night, apparently involving some of the same people. Police from both departments have yet to sort out details.
The victims of the attack -- three men and a woman from Sunnyvale and Fremont -- were walking to their car on Castro and talking in Hindi, their native language, when two women approached speaking racial epithets, according to police spokesperson Liz Wylie.
"The suspects were making fun of Hindi and saying the victims did not belong in America," Wylie said.
The confrontation turned violent after they began punching the female victim, Wylie said, and her husband tried to protect her. Four to six male suspects then appeared at the scene, pulling the husband away and punching and kicking him. They also punched the two remaining suspects when they tried to intervene. All four victims suffered minor injuries but refused treatment.
The attackers fled in two cars, but the victims noted the license plate number on one of the cars, which police traced to a house on the 2500 block of Annapolis Avenue in East Palo Alto. They contacted East Palo Alto police, who said they had already visited that same house in response to a shooting earlier in the evening, and that some of the suspects were at Stanford Hospital with the shooting victim.
At the hospital, police arrested Frisco Tuipulotu and Richard Juarez, both 23. East Palo Alto police located a third suspect, Frisco's cousin Tuuta Tuipulotu, 20, later that morning at 10:30 a.m. as he drove the vehicle identified during the Mountain View incident. He was arrested for possession of a concealed weapon, and turned over to Mountain View police, who charged him in connection with the hate crime.
A fourth suspect, Caroline Evaimalo, 24, was arrested that afternoon, and police say they are looking for at least two more. Wylie said the suspects, all from East Palo Alto, are Pacific Islander or Latino.
Police are still investigating any possible connection between the alleged hate crime and the shooting. East Palo Alto and Mountain View police aren't even sure where the shooting victim, Lutoviko Tausigna, 22, was when he was shot in the chest. He initially told police that he was shot on Annapolis Avenue in East Palo Alto; but a "shotspotter system," which detects gunshots fired in the city, did not record any activity there that night.
Detective David Carson of East Palo Alto said the two crimes are likely connected, and that the shooting may even have happened in Mountain View. "It is too coincidental," he said.
But Wylie said there is no evidence the shooting happened in Mountain View, and noted that no one reported hearing gunshots that night.
"We are not getting any indication that the victim of the East Palo Alto shooting was in our town," she said. "Until we know where it happened, we cannot investigate."
She added the suspects in custody are being cooperative, and that police are still working with them to figure out exactly what happened that night.
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