Possible suspects ID'd in attack on teenager

Shortly after police interviewed a 16-year-old West Seattle boy who was assaulted and robbed by two men who hurled racial insults along with punches, police identified two possible suspects.

Both men were identified and swabbed for DNA evidence, but neither was taken into custody at the time, police said Tuesday.

"It was decided that due to lack of a full physical description at the time we would get good contact info for them and release them," wrote Seattle police Officer Ryan Blake in his report written immediately after the May 25 attack.

Police spokesman Mark Jamieson declined to speak Tuesday about the "ongoing investigation" into the possible hate crime, but the victim's father, Tim McClellan, said his son was expecting to look at photos of the possible suspects on Wednesday.

According to McClellan, his son, Shane McClellan, who is white, had been playing video games at a friend's birthday party the night of May 24. He was supposed to be home by 10 p.m., but he lost track of time and left for home at 2 a.m., Tim McClellan said.

As he approached the top of a set of concrete stairs in the 7700 block of 14th Avenue Southwest, two men — one he described as black and the other as Filipino — asked Shane for a light.

"He didn't think anything of it," said Tim McClellan. "He felt safe."

But the two men grabbed him and started punching him and emptying his pockets; they poured drinks on him, urinated on him and forced his head into a hole in the ground, according to the police report. When Shane McClellan tried to escape, they dragged him up the stairs, police said.

His father said the two men also held a loaded gun to the teen's head, burned the back of his neck with cigarettes and whipped him with his own belt.

Throughout the assault, according to the police report, the men said, "How do you like it, white boy?" and "This is for enslaving our people."

Tim McClellan said his son tried to reason with his attackers. "He said, 'I'm Irish. My ancestors weren't even here.' They didn't care. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

According to Tim McClellan, the attack went on for about four hours, with his son drifting in and out of consciousness.

When the two men left after stealing cash, an MP3 player and a jacket, Shane McClellan made his way to the street and was taken to Harborview Medical Center, police said.

He is now recovering at home.

He told police his assailants were in their early 20s. He said they had been drinking a malt-liquor energy drink and smoking cigarettes.

When the officer returned to the site of the assault — near 14th Avenue Southwest and Southwest Holden Street — he found dried blood on the guardrails, an empty Four Loko brand energy beer can and fresh Marlboro Red cigarette butts, which he took into evidence.

As he was driving back to the precinct, the policeman saw a black man and a second man who appeared to be Filipino in their early 20s walking east in the 1600 block of Southwest Holden Street.

"I immediately noticed that the energy beer that both suspects possessed was the same brand, size and flavor as the empty can I located at the scene of the assault," Blake wrote in the report.

When Blake stopped the men he saw both had dried blood on their faces and/or hands, which were swabbed for DNA samples.

Police spokesman Jamieson said that the Police Department is investigating the attack as a possible hate crime. It ultimately will be up to prosecutors to decide whether to file malicious-harassment charges against the two.

Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com