“I feel like I'm recovering pretty well, but I still have some places that are hurting,” he said last week.

        He was kicked and punched in the face and head by about seven young black men on Walnut Street near Mercer. He wound up in the hospital with a subdural hematoma and a cheek wound that became infected.

        Mr. Sundberg was remodeling an abandoned building when a young boy stole a hammer. A co-worker gave chase and Mr. Sundberg followed.

        “I tried to stop him from chasing a kid for a hammer,” he said. He rounded a corner and saw his employee surrounded. “I thought I could take charge and use my foreman's voice. It didn't work.”

        Mr. Sundberg blames himself. “There were a lot of things I could have said better. It was a lot of guys standing around, looking for trouble — maybe selling drugs, maybe not. It probably didn't help that I was a white guy and they were all black.

        “I don't know what was in their hearts when they started beating on me.”

"Always angry'

        Mona C. is afraid she will get in trouble for saying she was harassed because she is white.

        She and her husband were downtown on a Sunday afternoon when a group of black kids started throwing wadded up paper at them as they walked north on Vine Street near Fountain Square. They called 911.

        She said a cop told her, “They're just angry all the time and it doesn't do much good to press charges because they will get off anyway.”

        Paula Dickerson was leaving the Riverfest fireworks on Labor Day weekend when roadblocks detoured her to Vine Street.

        Her SUV was stuck in traffic with the top down when, “I saw this thing go whipping past my eye. It was an egg. They were hitting the inside of the vehicle and hitting us.”

        The eggs were followed by bottles. Some of the young men were screaming “cracker,” “white hillbillies” and “white b----,” she said. The frightened girls in her car suffered cuts on their arms and legs. “The crowd was male and female, from 8 years old to an older gentleman of about 60, who said, 'What do you expect coming down here?' ”

        Ms. Dickerson of Mason is a junior at Wright State in Dayton. “I love Cincinnati. It won't keep me from going downtown,” she said.

        Mr. Sundberg still works downtown, but his men leave the job in pairs now. “He doesn't like to go downtown anymore,” said his wife, Terri.

        Mona C. is more blunt. “Now I see ads saying 'C'mon downtown' and I say, 'Yeah, sure.' I can see downtown dying.”

        Police are shifting downtown foot-patrol manpower to the evening hours to control large crowds of youths who gather there after school.

        Downtown is still safe. This stuff is rare. But not rare enough. If whites treated blacks this way, we'd call it “hate crime.”

        This weekend was the best of downtown. These victims saw the worst.

        E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.

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