Three White men calling themselves “skinheads” and shouting racial slurs allegedly carried out two unprovoked, racially motivated attacks that seriously injured three victims, including two Camp Pendleton Marine Corps officers, last year near the Oceanside Pier, according to an FBI search warrant unsealed Thursday in San Diego federal court.
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The alleged attacks, which occurred the evening of June 7, 2025, appear to have never been publicly reported before. In a sworn affidavit, an FBI agent asserted the three alleged attackers are being investigated on hate-crime charges, as well as charges of violating the victims’ civil rights and conspiring to obstruct an investigation.
According to the warrant, the three suspects assaulted a 21-year-old Oceanside man who is Asian-American near a beach bathroom, allegedly slamming his head into a concrete wall multiple times. The victim was later hospitalized and diagnosed with a concussion, among other injuries.
A short time later at the Oceanside Pier Amphitheater, the same three men allegedly shouted racial slurs while attacking two Marines — one was Black, the other White — who were off duty and enjoying a night out. Both Marines later sought medical treatment at a hospital on Camp Pendleton, where doctors allegedly diagnosed one with a concussion and multiple facial fractures.
The three attackers have each been interviewed by the FBI at least once and are aware of the investigation, according to the search-warrant affidavit. The FBI agent who sought the warrant asserted that in addition to the alleged racial slurs, further investigation revealed that at least two of the men are members of a White supremacist street gang in Riverside County, while the third has the word “skinhead” tattooed on his arm.
The Union-Tribune is not naming the men since they had not been charged as of Thursday.
The FBI declined to comment on the investigation, referring questions about potential charges to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego. The U.S. Attorney’s Office also declined to comment.
The search warrant unsealed Thursday seeks location data and other information from cellphone companies about four phones that investigators believe belong to the three suspected attackers. The FBI sought the warrant Tuesday and a San Diego federal magistrate judge approved it that same day.
The agent wrote that in addition to the racial slurs the victims and witnesses reported hearing, none of the alleged attackers knew or had any prior contact with the victims before assaulting them.
“Thus, I am not aware of any potential non-racial motive for the assaults,” the agent wrote. He added that the cellphone data sought by investigators would help confirm there had been no prior contact between the attackers and their victims, and would also provide potential evidence that the men conspired to obstruct the investigation.
According to the agent’s affidavit, the first victim was with his wife near a beach bathroom a little after sunset when two men approached from the shoreline yelling at them. The couple, who were waiting for a cousin who was using the bathroom, told investigators they didn’t initially realize what was happening until one of the men allegedly got close and yelled: “Didn’t you hear my friend talking to you? Don’t you know who we are? We’re skinheads.”
The two men then allegedly told the victim to empty his pockets, which the agent asserted in his affidavit was a ruse and not an actual robbery attempt. Moments later, both men allegedly began punching the victim in his head and face, then slamming his head into a concrete wall.
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The victim “believed at that point that the subjects intended to kill him,” the FBI agent wrote in the affidavit. The victim was able to escape momentarily and run onto the beach, “where the subjects continued to punch, kick, and stomp him,” according to the agent. The victim told investigators that at this point, “he became aware of a third white male attacker who was also striking him.”
A witness later told the FBI that he thought the trio was going to kill the victim, while his wife told investigators she could “hear the crack of the blows from 20 yards away,” according to the agent’s affidavit.
“For several weeks after the assault, (the victim) needed assistance performing basic daily functions, such as standing and moving around,” the FBI agent wrote. “His head trauma caused memory loss for several weeks, during which he was unable to remember the names of family members and common household objects.”
The agent wrote that one of the alleged attackers later admitted during a voluntary interview to being at the scene, but he claimed it was a fight between mutual combatants that occurred when the victim cursed at his friend.
As Oceanside police were responding to a 911 call from the first assault, the suspected attackers had allegedly moved north toward the pier amphitheater, where they encountered the two Marines, according to the affidavit. One of the Marines later told investigators that the men walked by shouting racial slurs, but they “did not respond to these taunts … (because) the Marines had been trained to avoid altercations while they were off base.”
Numerous witnesses also told investigators that they heard the alleged attackers shouting racial slurs at the two Marines, according to the affidavit.
The FBI agent wrote that he reviewed surveillance footage of the three alleged attackers walking toward the Marines and attacking them without provocation. During the ensuing fight, one of the Marines slammed one of the alleged attackers onto the ground, causing him to lose consciousness. The FBI agent wrote that two bystanders recorded portions of the encounter, and those videos showed the Marines “initially put their hands up and backed away before starting to defend themselves.”
Two of the alleged attackers claimed to police that they acted in self defense, while the third was still lying unconscious on the ground when police arrived, according to the FBI agent.
The agent wrote that subsequent investigation of the alleged attackers, including interviews with their friends and family members and reviews of their phone data and social media, revealed that all three held racist and White supremacist beliefs.
The agent alleged in the affidavit that two of the men claim membership in a White supremacist gang in Hemet, including one who allegedly posted a video of himself on social media doing a Nazi salute and shouting “Heil Hitler.”
Two of the men also used passwords, social media accounts and email addresses containing the numbers 1488 — a common White supremacist code, with 14 representing a 14-word racist phrase about securing the future for White children, and 88 denoting “Heil Hitler,” as H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
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