Barbecue ends with beatdown in Juniata Park

A MEMORIAL DAY barbecue ended in chaotic violence for a Juniata Park family after adults intervened in a spat between girls, with one man beating another unconscious, police said.

The incident unfolded about 5:30 p.m. Monday on Lawndale Street near Cayuga, as Paul Whitaker, 36, and his children were getting ready to leave his mother's house to head home to Trevose, Bucks County.

Whitaker watched as his daughters and their cousins were approached by a group of neighborhood girls with whom he was all too familiar.

Tensions between the two sets of kids have been running high for months, Whitaker said. The other girls often bully and tease his sister's kids, who share the home with their mom and grandmother.

"They were arguing, and I just told them all to get off the street," Whitaker told the Daily News last night. "I didn't want them to get into a fight."

The neighborhood girls obliged, and Whitaker went back about his business.

Within minutes, a large group - Whitaker estimates about 15 people - headed toward the house.

"They came down with a mission," Whitaker said. "You could see in their eyes that they were ready to go."

Several adults walked up to his mother's porch and began demanding answers: They asked her why Whitaker's daughter had hit one of their girls.

Whitaker's mother, 64, recognized the women - they've gotten into previous arguments with his mother, who has lived on the block for 40 years.

What was new, however, was their complaint: Whitaker had watched the interaction, and said he only saw arguing. No one on either side was hit, he said.

But that didn't last.

An unidentified man with the group stormed onto the Whitakers' porch, where he punched Whitaker's brother-in-law, said Officer Leeloni Palmiero, a police spokeswoman.

Whitaker said he tried to intervene, but the man - whom he estimated to be in his late 30s - then ambushed him. He had something heavy in his hand, but Whitaker said he couldn't get a good look at the object.

"There were so many people on the porch; there were fists and hands flying everywhere," Whitaker said.

The attacker punched and stomped Whitaker, slamming his head into the concrete until he was unconscious.

Whitaker's daughters, ages 12 and 14, tried to protect him but caught blows to the head from several girls and women - including a pregnant 17-year-old - allied with the attacker, Palmiero said.

Whitaker, the girls and Whitaker's mother - who injured her arm in the fracas - were treated at area hospitals.

It took five stitches to mend the gash above Whitaker's eye, he said, adding that his head is swollen and his abdomen bruised.

His daughters had no major physical injuries, but were badly shaken up.

"They couldn't sleep that night," he said. "They were just hysterical."

Trisha Pellicciotti, Whitaker's ex-wife whose daughters were assaulted, said the melee came after months of simmering racial tensions between the Whitakers, who are white, and several black and Latino neighbors.

She called the case a hate crime. Besides her daughters, Pellicciotti said, her nieces and nephews, ages 7 to 12, witnessed the beatdown and are paralyzed with fear.

"They're prisoners in their own home," Whitaker said of his sister's kids. "They can't leave, they can't even go outside."

Palmiero said police paperwork makes no mention of weapons, any racial motivation or a crowd of assailants.

Still, police consider the case an aggravated assault and aim to arrest at least the main attacker.

But after officers arrived on the scene, that man was nowhere to be found, and other residents on the block denied knowing him and "refused to talk to police," Whitaker said.

"I just don't understand this anger," Whitaker said. "We grew up in that neighborhood; it's completely changed around my mother's house."

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