Hindi Speakers Attacked on Peninsula

Four East Palo Alto residents have been arrested on suspicion of  committing a hate crime early Saturday morning in Mountain View, police said.

Police said four victims had left a bar and were walking to their  car in a parking lot in the 200 block of Castro Street when they were  approached by two female suspects.

The suspects harassed the victims, who were speaking Hindi, and  made racially charged comments about their ethnicity and the language they  were using, police said.

The two female suspects allegedly approached a female victim and  began punching and slapping her. When the victim's husband intervened, a  group of four to six male suspects appeared, dragging the husband away from  his wife, police said. The suspects then began to punch and kick the husband.

Two other male victims attempted to intervene but were also  punched, police said.

The suspects then fled in two different vehicles, according to  police.

The victims managed to obtain the license plate number of one of  the vehicles and investigators learned the owner of the vehicle lived in East  Palo Alto, police said. East Palo Alto police began to work with Mountain  View officers and alerted them that, coincidentally, they had been  investigating a possible shooting connected to that address.

East Palo Alto police also told Mountain View police that some  people involved in the East Palo Alto case were in the waiting room of  Stanford Hospital, and had been in Mountain View earlier.

Mountain View police responded to the hospital and arrested Frisco  Tuipulotu and Richard Juarez, both 23-year-old East Palo Alto residents, on  charges of committing a hate crime in connection with the Mountain View case.

An additional suspect, identified as Tuuta Tuipulotu, 20, was  located by East Palo Alto police during a traffic stop and later arrested by  Mountain View police, who also arrested a fourth suspect, identified as  24-year-old Caroline Evaimalo. Evaimalo had gone to the Mountain View Police  Department to be interviewed.

The investigation into the hate crime is ongoing, Mountain View  police said.

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