Beach Attack By Mob Of E-Bike Teens Is Latest In Disturbing CA Teen Takeover Trend

ORANGE COUNTY, CA — A violent attack out of Orange County this month drew nationwide attention when video of a man being attacked by a mob of teenagers on e-bikes near the Huntington Beach pier emerged.

Footage of the violent attack mirrored similar attacks seen around the nation and especially in the Golden State. Teen takeovers, in which violence sometimes breaks out, are a trend likely to continue into the summer, experts warn.

Among "teen takeovers" documented across the United States, minors and young adults often using e-bikes, ATVs and vehicles to evade law enforcement, Senior Legal Fellow at Advancing American Freedom Amy Swearer told Patch.

The large gatherings of teens, Swearer said, are largely spurred by boredom, social media and a general lack of consequence.

"The use of social media in conjunction with hooliganism is not necessarily new, but this is the first time states, cities, local authorities have ever seen social media being used to this extent to facilitate youth hooliganism. It is fairly recent and increasingly a problem," Swearer said.

Swearer pointed to the litany of Instagram, Facebook and Tiktok accounts dedicated to showcasing teen street fights, vandalism and more.

"The delinquency is becoming almost formalized in a social sense of how this is happening," she said, referring to the mass popularization of violent viral videos involving teens. "You have entire Instagram, TikTok accounts that make money off of views — there’s almost this institutionalization of delinquency in this type of social media usage."

The Huntington Beach melee was filmed from close up and quickly went viral. The incident happened at around 8 p.m. May 9 in the area of 103 Pacific Coast Highway.

The man and his wife were riding home on the boardwalk when they crossed paths with a gathering of a large group of teens, many of them with e-bikes, hanging out on the beach.

The man, identified as Sam El-Said, told KTLA that when he slowed down to navigate through the crowd he was struck in the face by a glass bottle that someone had thrown.

El-Said told KTLA that when he got off his scooter to see what had happened, someone knocked him to the ground from behind. Four to six high school-aged kids then kicked and stomped him while he was down, he said.

Video footage obtained by KTLA shows the man, identified as Sam El-Said, on his knees in the sand with a group of teenagers crowded around him.

Similar scenes have emerged around the country.

In November in Hermosa Beach, multiple surveillance videos captured an incident showing a man being attacked by a group of people in an alley about a block from the pier. The group then fled on e-bikes.

After footage from the incident was widely broadcast, one parent recognized their child among their attackers and turned them in to police.

Last year, a mob of youths on bicycles brutally beat a man in the middle of the street in broad daylight near LA's busy San Vicente Boulevard.

Bystanders captured the brazen attack on video.

"The suspects immediately overwhelmed the victim, punching and kicking the victim, even after he had been pushed and pulled down to the ground," the LAPD told Patch. When witnesses approached to intervene, the suspects left the area together, riding their bicycles southbound on Carrillo Drive."

In Northern California, teen takeovers at a beach in Alameda in March drew hundreds of youths and prompted a warning from police after several fights broke out, sending one youth to the hospital.

The problem of teen takeovers has gotten so bad in Long Beach, New Jersey, officials were considering an emergency curfew after a gathering of several hundred teenagers and young adults escalated into chaos.

A May 12 incident prompted at least one area resort to go into lockdown and trains to be delayed by up to 45 minutes. Nearly 140 officers were deployed to get control of the disorder, which ultimately resulted in several arrests.

In March, a teenage motorcyclist was arrested in Riverside County after leading deputies on a high-speed chase alongside a group of other riders.

The group of about 20 juveniles were riding recklessly and blocking traffic by riding across the full width of the street, police said.

Also in March, a group of teen's on e-bikes tried to run down a Black student at University of California, Irvine, police said.

According to police, the incident involved multiple teens on e-bikes hurling racial slurs at the student and spitting. One of the suspects injured the back leg of the victim with the tire of an e-bike.

One of the earliest and most vocal victims of 'bike mob hooliganism' is "Beverly Hills, 90210" alum Ian Ziering, who was attacked by a mob of mini-bikers in Hollywood in 2024.

Afterward, he called on Los Angeles officials to crack down on "lawlessness" and "hooliganism."

"The incident has left me deeply concerned about the growing boldness of such groups who disrupt public safety and peace. This situation highlights a larger issue of hooliganism on our streets and the need for effective law enforcement responses to such behavior,"he wrote on Instagram. "As a citizen and a parent, I find it unacceptable that groups can freely engage in this kind of behavior, causing fear and chaos, while the response from authorities seems insufficient."

Swearer said that the uptick in teen takeovers is further spurned by the reckless use of personal vehicles such as e-bikes, e-motorcycles and four-wheelers.

"I suspect that the increased mobility helps teens both get to the other types of manifestations of that problem and more easily escape from law enforcement when those takeovers get out of hand," Swearer said. "We've also seen a good deal how those e-bike — and even rentable e-scooters — are enabling even more deviant behaviors amongst smaller break-off groups once the takeovers happen."

Ultimately, Swearer emphasized that both education and police enforcement on a city-by-city basis was one of the few — and best — ways to intervene and discourage the raucous gatherings.

"Teen takeovers really are a much more multifaceted issue and complex picture. We do ourselves, our society and our kids a disservice by pretending it’s a really simple thing," she said. "And in the interim, what I’ve consistently said is that if you want to stop these from devolving into chaos, the easiest thing to do is to actually just have police enforcement.”