New footage has surfaced questioning the innocence of three Marines involved in a brawl with a group of teenagers.
The new video shows the teenager provoking the soldiers who stumble around topless with beer bottles around San Clemente beach.
One of the soldiers punches the teenagers, dropping his beer bottle and having to be held down by his comrade while the kids continue to goad them while they film with their phones.
The Marines said they were attacked after confronting the group about setting off firecrackers.
But footage taken before the all-out brawl shows Marine Hunter Antonino drinking with some teenagers and chatting openly with them, all the while holding a bottle of whiskey.
Nine youths have since been arrested in the attack, which saw soldiers kicked as they lay on the ground on San Clemente beach on Friday night.
The new video shows the moment a large group surrounds two of the Marines as they start pushing each other back and forth
In a new video, Antonino can be seen holding a bottle of whiskey completely surrounded by the teenagers while what appears to be a game of cards with them.
Antonino, pictured here, said the fight started after they urged the teenagers to stop setting off firecrackers
On Tuesday, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department confirmed it had charged four boys and a girl with assault with a deadly weapon and they were being held in the juvenile detention center.
Another four were also charged with assault and assault.
San Clemente Mayor Chris Duncan announced that officers have apprehended the prime suspects in the group of teenagers who launched the attack.
He said, “They think they have the people they’re looking for.” Not to say there might not be a few others out there. “They’re pretty sure they have the main culprits.”
The recordings of the incident were used to locate those involved, the mayor added.
“In this day and age, you get caught — people are going to record it,” Duncan said.
“I hope this serves as a lesson to the young people in the community not to get out of hand when something like this happens.”
Hunter Antonino, one of the Marines, told KCAL that the fight started when he asked the youths to stop setting off firecrackers
Antonino said he and his friend enjoyed a rare break from Camp Pendleton in Oceanside during Memorial Day weekend when the crowd began setting off the fireworks.
Then a piece of debris hit him in the face and Antonino said he politely asked her to leave.
He said: “They were setting off firecrackers, they were aggressive and obnoxious and annoying other people, so I went up to them and told them to stop,” he said.
But the group followed him back to the pier, where Antonino said he and his friend warned the teenagers that they were Marines, “so they were going, but they didn’t.”
A group of nine teenagers have now been arrested for attacking the three Marines
Hunter Antonino is seen here with a relative after enlisting as a Marine in 2022
Antonino told KCAL that the fight started when he told the youths to stop lighting firecrackers
In the original one-minute clip, posted to Facebook, the Marines could be seen attempting to climb the steps in front of the Pier Bowl while a group of teenagers yelled at them.
As they approach the stairs, a boy is seen brutally hitting one of the Marines on the back of the head.
The soldier turned and charged at the attacker, leading to an all-out brawl as the boy’s friends jumped in, punched and kicked him.
Within seconds, the group circled the two Marines and yelled “Get that f***er” and “f*** that f***er up,” even using the N-word at one point.
The original attack began outside the Pier Bowl as the Marines climbed the steps
And two of the victims were seen curled up on the ground as the group continued to brutally kick them.
The fight only ended when two bystanders, an unidentified man and woman, intervened and yelled at the children, “Stop, what are you doing?”
San Clemente Mayor Chris Duncan called the Memorial Day weekend attack “tragic.”
“This is San Clemente, Marines are always welcome here, always celebrated, always taken care of, and that’s why it’s so tragic,” he said.