It Started as a Routine Party but Ended in a Tragic Death : Torrance Youth’s Fatal Stabbing Ends Group’s Carousing

At first, the group at Torrance High School was like a lot of campus cliques. About a dozen teen-agers hung out together at school. Several of the young men played on the school football and basketball teams. On weekends, they sought out parties around the South Bay to drink and socialize.

To “The Crew,” as they called themselves, it seemed harmless.

Adopted New Name

Many of the friends said they remained close after graduating from Torrance High in 1988. Some of them adopted a new name, the South Bay Posse, borrowed from a mounted police group that appears annually in the Torrance Armed Forces Day Parade.

Then something changed.

Sheriff’s deputies say that half a dozen times this last summer they were called to parties on the Palos Verdes Peninsula by reports that the South Bay Posse had committed assaults and vandalized homes.

Then, as quickly as they had started, the incidents ended last month when three in the group were stabbed, one fatally, at the climax of a brawl with other middle-class teen-agers who were holding a party in San Pedro.

Six weeks after the violent confrontation, Los Angeles police are still investigating the death of Wade Hashimoto, 19, of Torrance. The 18-year-old host of the party, Matt Horeczko, was arrested on suspicion of murder just after the Aug. 17 party, which took place at his home on Chandeleur Drive in San Pedro.

Horeczko has not been charged with a crime, but he remains the only suspect in Hashimoto’s death, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Bogue.

Sitting in the living room of one of a row of neat tract homes in central Torrance, Hashimoto’s parents cannot stop asking why their son had to die.

And in an equally model neighborhood in San Pedro, Horeczko’s mother and father want to know why a murder investigation should shadow their son as he starts his freshman year at the University of San Diego.

Bright Futures

Answers are not easy to come by in either Torrance or San Pedro, communities divided by the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Friends and relatives described Horeczko and Hashimoto, who attended El Camino College, as popular high school football players with apparently bright futures.

“I cried that night for Matt Horeczko and his family. And it’s a tragedy that Wade is dead,” said Alicia Lorenz, the mother of one of Hashimoto’s friends. “I prayed for Horeczko’s mother and family and I prayed for Wade’s parents.”

Hashimoto’s death has stunned the South Bay Posse, half a dozen members of the group said last week in telephone interviews.

Most said they have not been out partying and carousing since the killing. Even before the Horeczko party, some members of the group said, they had grown tired of their repeated confrontations with other teen-agers. They blamed the series of fights over the summer on a few members who were instigators.

Although they remain loyal to the group, which counted from a dozen to 20 members, some complained that they didn’t like the name or the reputation it was gaining.

“We were getting labeled as troublemakers,” said one 19-year-old, who said he did not like the name South Bay Posse in the first place. “Wade didn’t like that, either. But Wade would never not help a friend if a friend was in a fight.”

More than six weeks after the Aug. 17 melee, the Los Angeles Police Department is still tracking down witnesses from among the estimated 150 young people who attended the party. No charges have been filed.

Los Angeles police Detective James Vena, who is heading the investigation, declined to say what evidence led police to arrest Horeczko that night, before releasing him two days later.

Horeczko’s father, Bohdan, was out of town with his wife Aug. 17 and did not know there would be a party, he said last week. His children were celebrating the night before Matt Horeczko was to leave for his first year in college.

Bohdan Horeczko said only Matt’s friends were supposed to be invited, but word got out and young people from all over the South Bay arrived at the home. The outsiders were not turned away. The Horeczko children charged $2 per person to help pay for a disc jockey they hired for the evening, and guests drank either from a keg of beer or from refreshments they brought with them, said Chris Wood, a family friend.

Heard It Through the Grapevine

The Torrance teen-agers said they learned about the party through the grapevine and arrived in several cars sometime after 9 p.m.

At 10:30 p.m., as planned, Horeczko turned off the music and told everyone it was time to go home. It was after that, both sides agree, that the trouble began.

The Torrance youths said they were leaving peacefully, milling about in the street, when Horeczko’s older brother, Greg, got aggressive and pressed them to leave.

But Wood said it was the outsiders who precipitated the fight, by obstinately refusing to clear the street.

The brawl started with Greg Horeczko and Jose Romero of the posse fighting, their friends said in interviews. Each would say the other was the instigator.

With police refusing to comment, details remain fuzzy. But in a dozen interviews last week, witnesses said fights erupted all along Chandeleur Drive and on the lawn in front of the Horeczko home. Both sides say they were outnumbered and they fought only in self-defense.

Hit With Baseball Bat

Wood said he was hit on the head with a bottle. Matt Horeczko suffered a broken nose and injured his back when he was hit with a baseball bat, while his older brother, Greg, suffered cuts and bruises, their father said.

Romero and Derek Gray of Hawthorne, who came with the Torrance group, were stabbed. The two 19-year-olds were hospitalized briefly.

According to one of his friends, Hashimoto joined the fighting on the Horeczkos’ lawn but walked back to the street when the sides separated. Friends say it was at the curb, where he was no threat to anyone, that Hashimoto was stabbed and fell to the ground.

The San Pedrans at the party said they do not recall seeing Hashimoto until he lay bleeding in the street. Witnesses on both sides say that in the confusion of the melee they did not see who stabbed him.

According to one of his lawyers, Dennis Carroll of Wilmington, Matt Horeczko had been forced to defend himself and his parents’ home in the face of a vicious mob.

Small Knife in Pocket

Horeczko recalls pulling a small knife from his pocket and “cutting” one of the youths, believed to be Romero, Carroll said. But the attorney said Horeczko was beaten so badly that “he does not remember anything after that.” Carroll said there is no evidence to prove that Horeczko stabbed Hashimoto and Gray.

The Horeczkos said that the damage to the front of their home shows the severity of the attack by the Torrance youths before the stabbing. Windows were smashed, a screen door was torn off the hinges and the front door was repeatedly battered, Bohdan Horeczko said.

The Torrance teen-agers, for their part, said that they were in just as much danger as the Horeczkos during the fight and that there was no reason for anyone to pull a knife. They said the home was vandalized only after they found their friend bleeding to death.

The stabbing ended a summer during which the posse had been accused of making at least half a dozen forays onto the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where they allegedly busted up parties, assaulted other youths and vandalized homes, sheriff’s deputies who patrol the area said.

In most cases, charges were not filed because the complainants told deputies that they could not identify their attackers or did not want to go to court.

However, two members of the posse were charged with crimes.

John Daly of Torrance was charged in South Bay Municipal Court last week with misdemeanor battery for allegedly punching another teen-ager after a Fourth of July party in Rancho Palos Verdes. Daly, 18, said that he was present but that someone else hit the victim, John McKivett, 19, of Culver City.

A sheriff’s report says that after the assault, the posse smashed up the front of a house on Deep Brook Drive, causing $3,200 in damage. No one was charged with vandalism, and Daly and his friends denied that they trashed the house.

Romero, one of those stabbed at the Horeczko party, has been charged with battery for an incident July 15 in Rolling Hills Estates. A sheriff’s report says Romero had just left another party when he punched Michael Willey, 19. Romero said in an interview that he was defending himself because Willey tried to hit him.

Blamed for Fights

Daly and Romero said the posse has been blamed for fights at parties they did not even attend.

They said the group did more than just fight. “Over the years, it’s became pretty close to a second family,” said Romero, who lives in Carson. “We do everything together.”

Often the group would gather in their cars, mostly pickup trucks jacked high off the ground, and drink beer in a parking lot near Torrance High School. They played softball in local parks, went to movies and, occasionally, took more extended trips to Mexico, Palm Springs or Magic Mountain.

At one memorable gathering this year, Daly’s birthday, a giant female wrestler named “Matilda the Hun” performed her reknowned body slam on each member of the group.

But some members of the group said that a few of their buddies had become too interested in fighting, and screaming their signature “Posse! Posse!” to identify themselves.

Jim Bowers, 19, said in the weeks before the Horeczko party that he, Hashimoto and several others had talked about how they were sick of the violence and even stayed away from a few parties. “We were getting a bad name,” Bowers said. “It was stupid.”

Search for Identity

A teacher at Torrance High School, who knew the youths, tried to explain the aggressive stance as a search for identity.

“I think they were young men who were naive,” she said, asking not to be named. “I think they were trying to find some kind of success through some bravado . . . trying to be big, tough and macho.”

Another man who knows the group agreed. “It was important to them to try to express themselves,” the man said. “To say, ‘Hey, we are tough. We are bad.’ ”

The teacher said, however, that Hashimoto was not one of those who seemed concerned with proving his manhood.

Despite their worries about the repeated fighting, several of the teen-agers said they found it hard to stay away from the parties. The promise of meeting young women, drinking and having a good time had a strong pull.

“Wade, he just wanted to have a good time,” said one friend. “The party scene was just something that was sort of there on a Friday or Saturday night.”

Studied Business

Hashimoto, who played football in high school, had gone on to study business at El Camino College with intentions of transferring to Long Beach State or USC, said his father, Claude, a businessman.

Hashimoto also worked part time delivering pizza and, on weekends, he socialized with friends.

Horeczko also played football, at Mary Star of the Sea High School in San Pedro, where he was an all-league fullback and defensive back. He also played baseball and surfed.

The 5-foot-11, 185-pound Horeczko is playing football this fall at the University of San Diego.

On both sides of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the two families wait for the district attorney’s office to make a decision. It is certain to devastate either the Hashimotos or the Horeczkos.

Bohdan Horeczko, an engineer, said the violence and the continuing police investigation has cast a pall over his family. They wait anxiously, hoping that no charges will be filed.

Claude and Carol Hashimoto are waiting too.

“The main thing is that Wade is dead and somebody killed him. I don’t care what type of reputation (his friends) had,” Carol Hashimoto said. “You still don’t kill someone.”