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Trinidad resident Angie Harder was left with bruises, a sore back, an eye injury and a nasty headache following a violent attack Wednesday evening when she tried to save a teenager from getting pummeled by a group of bullies, she told the Outpost in a phone interview.

Harder, 53, and her husband, 55, were playing pickleball at Arcata’s Larson Park when they saw a group of six or eight loud teenagers gathered in a tight circle on a nearby knoll.

“Some kid’s getting beat up in the circle,” she said. “He was on the ground with another kid on top of him, just belting him in the head and body – punching and punching and punching.”

None of the other adults on the pickleball courts immediately responded, she said, but Harder said she didn’t hesitate.

“I run over there – this poor kid’s being beat to death,” she said.

Followed by her husband, an off-duty state law enforcement officer, Harder yelled at the teens to stop or else she’d call the cops. Based on her own experience as a kid in the 1980s, she expected that the young assailants would disperse once adults intervened. Instead, the juveniles stood their ground and yelled at them, shouting things like, “Get out of here! This is the way this is gonna get handled! We don’t need the cops!”

Several of the teen onlookers were filming the beating with their phones. Harder was shaken by the brutality, seeing the lone victim lying listless on the ground as his attacker continued his assault.

“The abject terror that was in this kid’s eyes, I’ll never forget it as long as I live,” she said. “He couldn’t even move. He was not trying to defend himself as this kid straddled him, just punching and punching.”

She said her husband moved in and grabbed the assailant, which set off a melee. A teen girl grabbed Harder by the bun in her hair, snapping her neck backwards. Her husband then tried to pull the girl off his wife. “Then it was on,” Harder said.

She described three more teen girls “jumping” her and knocking her to the ground, where they proceeded to kick and punch her body and head. Then one of the girls bashed Harder in the head with a bottle of Gatorade, according to her account. When we interviewed her Thursday morning, she’d just gotten out of her doctor’s office, where she was informed that she’d suffered damage to one eye, among other injuries.

During the attack, she managed to stagger to her feet. “I was out of my mind – total fight or flight,” she said. 

The altercation wasn’t over. The teens turned their antagonism toward Harder and her husband, surrounding them and yelling, she said. Some of them taunted her husband, saying he couldn’t hit them because they’re underage. She said he wondered how true that was, whether he’d lose his job if he was trying to defend himself or his wife. 

“We’re staggering around. And they didn’t leave! They were screaming, ‘We fucking told you guys this is what would happen.’ I’ve never been in a fight in my 53 years, but I thought we were going again. … I said, ‘I’m calling the cops,’ and they said, ‘Go ahead! I’ll fucking kick your ass again!’” 

She managed to retreat to a nearby parking lot to call 9-1-1. While she was on the phone she noticed that the original victim had managed to get away, which she considers a silver lining. 

By the time officers from the Arcata Police Department showed up, most of the teens had dispersed, but three or so returned to the scene, she said, one of whom, a teen girl, was detained.

“She was belligerent and screaming,” she said. “They had to put her in the vehicle to detain her. She tried to kick the window out.”

Reached by phone Thursday, Arcata Police Detective Sgt. Keith Altizer said officers were dispatched to the scene at approximately 5:22 p.m., and while they did not locate an active fight, they spoke with the witnesses who tried to intervene and were assaulted in turn. 

Sgt. Altizer would not confirm whether this was Harder and her husband, nor did he provide any further information what happened except to say that people were detained but no arrests were made.

“All I can say right now is that it’s currently being investigated,” he said. “We understand that there was a video – or multiple [videos] – that we would love to see.”

Sgt. Altizer asked for anyone who sees the videos, perhaps posted to social media, to forward it to the Arcata Police Department. Anyone with further information about the incident is also asked to report it via phone (707-822-2428) or online.

Harder hopes that witnesses may have more information.

”Of the 30 people standing in the pickleball courts, did anybody take a video? Did anyone know any of the kids involved? Who’s the kid, the original victim?” she asked, sounding frustrated. “Also, for the pickleball community: Hello! What are you doing?”

She wonders why none of them called the cops or tried to help intervene. And she hopes that someone – parents or a teacher, maybe – notices the underage victim’s injuries or sees footage of the attack and asks questions so that the assailants can be held accountable.

[CORRECTION: This post originally misspelled Angie Harder’s name. The Outpost regrets the error.]