Parents allege hate crime

Laguna couple whose son is black speak out after a watermelon is tossed at their home.

Parents of a Laguna Beach High School student said their son was the target of a hate crime two days after Christmas when a watermelon was tossed toward the family’s home and splattered on the driveway.

“I know what throwing a watermelon at a person who is black is designed to connote,” said the father, Maurice Possley.

Possley, a former reporter and editor with the Chicago Tribune, and his wife, Cathleen Falsani, also a journalist, are white. They said their 17-year-old adopted son, Vasco, was targeted because he is black.

The Tribune is owned by the Los Angeles Times’ parent company.

Laguna Beach police, who received the complaint, said they were investigating five juveniles with possible connections to the Dec. 27 incident.

The Laguna Beach Unified School District sent a letter to families and staff Friday saying that high school administrators were notified of the complaint by police.

The district letter indicated, and police later confirmed, that the suspects were Laguna students.

The family was getting ready to eat dinner shortly before 9 o’clock that night, Possley said, when he heard something.

“They were calling Vasco by name, and as I headed to the door, there was a thud,” Possley said.

Possley said he noticed that one of the pieces of watermelon had a sticker on it showing the brand. He typed the brand name into Google and discovered a distributor.

Possley said Falsani called a local grocery store to see if any employees remembered juveniles purchasing the fruit.

One employee did. Meanwhile, a neighbor’s security camera had captured a truck, believed to be the getaway vehicle, in front of Possley’s house, he said.

In a written statement, Possley said he and Falsani hoped to raise awareness so as to prevent other such incidents.

“We are not here to talk about retribution or to paint ourselves or our son as victims,” Possley said. “We are here to let the people of Laguna Beach know the facts of what happened to us and call upon everyone to stand together to send a clear, articulate message that this kind of hateful act is not tolerated in Laguna Beach.”

The district’s letter offered the same sort of plea for tolerance.

“As a school district, we continue to work on teaching cultural proficiency, including self-awareness of how each student’s ethnicity, culture and life experiences may impact others,” it said.