Gamaliel Lozada Beaten Beyond Recognition In Orange County

Thirty-two year-old Gamaliel Lozada of San Juan Capistrano in Southern Orange County, California was beaten over the head with some type of blunt force instrument–like a baseball bat or tire iron– a few minutes after leaving his home Tuesday evening, at approximately 6:40 pm local time. He was beaten so badly that onlookers thought he had been hit by a car. Lozada had just left home a few minutes earlier to buy ice cream and soda for his wife and two children. His wife, Gabriela Salinas, says all Gamaliel does is go to work at a nearby grocery store and go home. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department confirms that he is a hard-working family man with a respectable job. Lozada told his wife he was going to a nearby liquor store to buy ice cream and soda for dinner and ten minutes later she heard sirens. She went outside to discover her husband lying in the street in a pool of blood.

Lozada underwent brain surgery and is in “extremely critical” condition in a medically induced coma at Mission Hospital. While motive is unknown at this time, it’s obvious what everyone isn’t saying: that this could be the latest in a string of hate crimes against Latinos, which the FBI notes are on the rise in this country. Lozada, whose third daughter lives in Mexico, only had a few dollars on him–enough to buy ice cream and soda–so robbery doesn’t seem a likely motive. Since it was daylight out when he was attacked, investigators believe there had to be plenty of witnesses, but so far no one is coming forward. They are emphasizing to the public that any witnesses who call 1-866-TIP-OCSD will not even be asked their name.