Business Owner Assaulted By Teens Asks Why Only One Was Charged

It’s been over three months since business owner Mario Sanchez was assaulted by three teenagers in his shop on East 14th Street in downtown San Leandro, and he still hasn’t gotten a satisfactory answer to this question: Why has only one of the three youths been charged and sentenced to Juvenile Hall?

In this Patch video Sanchez explains some of the situation in his own words.

Sanchez owns EFX Computer at 1795 East 14th Street. He does repairs.

On Dec. 10, a teenager from San Leandro came into the shop to get his iPhone fixed. Two friends were with him. There was a dispute over payment. An altercation ensued. Sanchez got bruised.

The police were called. They arrived and apprehended one of the three boys leaving the scene.

That boy has since appeared before a juvenile magistrate, been sentenced to correctional time and put on probation until his 18th birthday, Sanchez says.

But the other two boys were not arrested nor were they subsequently charged by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.

These two boys included the one who didn’t pay for the phone repair in the first place and who Sanchez considers the ringleader.

Morever, Sanchez said that during the dispute this boy made reference to having an in with the San Leandro police department.

Sanchez told all of this to his business friend, Dan Dillman, who owns the Bal Theater and also does computer repairs.

Dillman told former city council candidate Chris Crow who wrote a Facebook note airing the possibility that the police who responded to the incident “recognized one of the teenage assailants as the son of a San Leandro Police Officer.”

The posting of that note led to a meeting between Crow and San Leandro police Captain Ed Tracy.

On Thursday, Chief Sandra Spagnoli said the decision not to charge the other two boys was made at the discretion of the DA, not the police. She also said that arresting the two boys on the night of the incident was not necessary for the DA to have brought charges. 

On Thursday, as interest in the matter escalated, Sanchez said he received three visits from police.

The first, in the morning, was from an officer who asked him to identify the boy who he considered the ringleader, the same boy who refused to pay for the phone repair and who supposedly made reference to the police connection.

Patch originally reported incorrectly that he also was visited that day by a uniformed officer who was the boy's father. Sanchez told Patch Friday that the visitor was the boy's father, but that he was not in unform. The man apologized for his son's actions. (The Patch error in misunderstanding that the man was in uniform arose from a language barrier.)

An earlier version of this story did not include this statement from Police Chief Sandra Spagnoli: "The allegations of favoritism have no merit. None of the suspects know or are related to anyone working at the San Leandro Police Department. Due to the seriousness of (these) allegations, we followed up with the suspect and his parents to confirm same."

About 5:45 p.m. Thursday, two SLPD officers returned and asked if Sanchez wanted them to continue their investigation into the other two boys.

Sanchez told Patch he told them yes.