Sunday, July 30, 2006

ENCINITAS – Gang members who allegedly took a wallet from a migrant at knifepoint found themselves attacked by vengeful workers who put two of the robbers in the hospital, a sheriff's sergeant said.

The fight was reported about 7 p.m. in the 1100 block of Gardena Road, sheriff's Sgt. Mark Varnau said.

Sheriff's deputies arrived to find several men injured, Varnau said.

Two of those injured were alleged gang members, Varnau said.

“One of them got his head split open from one side to the other,” Varnau said.

Investigators determined that one of the migrants involved in the street brawl had been robbed earlier at a coin laundry on Santa Fe Drive, Sgt. Chuck Yancey said.

The migrant quickly pointed out the gang members to some friends and they went after the suspects, Yancey said.

The gangsters, said Yancey, “promptly fled the area with the migrants in hot pursuit.”

The gang members eventually stopped to face their opponents but pulled out knives, Yancey said, whereupon the migrants quickly dismantled a wooden fence and made clubs, Yancey said.

The fight left one migrant worker stabbed in the chest and another gang member with a fractured bone in his back, Yancey said.

The three men were taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, which has a trauma center, authorities said.

Deputies determined that the wallet robbery was part of an ongoing pattern of victimization of migrants by gang members in Encinitas, Yancey said.

Detectives are investigating, Yancey said.