Oakland Youth Basketball Coach Assaulted After Game, Rival Coaches Suspected In Attack
OAKLAND (KPIX 5) -- A volunteer youth basketball coach has been hospitalized after friends and relatives said other coaches brutally assaulted him during a tournament in Oakland.
Coach Broyce Batchan suffered a swollen eye, fractured bones in his face and a fractured knee in the incident. Batchan, a father of five, never expected coaching would get him hospitalized.
"How does somebody who's trying to help the community get hurt like this?" said Tequila McClinton, the coach's wife.
McClinton said the incident happened at the Oakland Jamtown youth basketball tournament at Jack London Square. There was an argument over the ages of some of the kids on a team called West Coast Ground Up from Sacramento.
The next day, the Ground Up lost a game. A family friend said the assault occurred when the coach stepped out to have a cigarette. The coach told his wife the people who assaulted him were other coaches from the Ground Up team.
Tiffany Bustos said her son, a player on the team, found the coach bruised and bloodied in the parking lot. "I mean, they beat him ruthlessly. It was five on one," Bustos told KPIX 5.
No one saw the assault happened, but there are surveillance cameras that employees hope to review.
McClinton said Oakland Police were investigating and that they talked with the coach at the hospital on Tuesday.
