WASILLA -- Alaska State Troopers said a 14-year-old boy was hospitalized with serious injuries to his jaw and another suffered a broken tooth Monday evening after two Wasilla men gave them a roadside beating over obscene hand gestures.
The teenagers said the assault happened while they were waving at cars along Tait Drive south of Seldon Road near Wasilla, according to charging documents filed Tuesday morning at Palmer's courthouse.
Several men in a silver car flipped them off, "so the teenagers flipped the vehicle off," Trooper Bryce Weight wrote in a sworn affidavit filed with the documents.
The car stopped. Two men -- later identified as 24-year-old Jonathan Kaalakea and 20-year-old Jaime Kaalakea -- got out and yelled at the teenagers, warning them not to flip them off again, the trooper said.
"As the vehicle was leaving, the teenagers flipped the vehicle off again," Weight wrote.
The men stopped the car again, got out and began hitting the teenagers in the face and head, the trooper said. Another man stayed in the car to restrain two dogs inside.
Troopers responded to the area after emergency dispatchers received several 911 calls just before 7 p.m. reporting three or four male adults beating up two teenagers on the side of the road, the affidavit says.
One of the teenagers was spitting blood and the front part of his bottom jaw looked separated from the rest, Weight wrote. The other had a broken front tooth and the area around his mouth was red.
A relative said the boys were walking home from the corner store at Seldon and Bogard roads and did not know their attackers.
Weight said that as he talked to the teenagers, another trooper stopped the suspect vehicle five or 10 minutes away on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway near 49th State Street, the documents show. Jonathan and Jaime Kaalakea confirmed they assaulted the teens but said the boys flipped them off first. The older man was the main aggressor but the younger man also participated, the trooper said.
Jonathan Kaalakea later received four stitches at Mat-Su Regional to close a cut on his right knuckle, the affidavit says.
An ambulance took one of the 14-year-old boys to Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, troopers said. The other was driven home and then to the suspects' car where he identified them as the assailants.
Troopers arrested Jonathan Kaalakea on charges of third-degree assault, a felony, and fourth-degree assault, a misdemeanor, charging documents show. He was lodged at Mat-Su Pretrial Facility on $3,000 bail but has since bonded out.
They issued a misdemeanor summons for fourth-degree assault to Jaime Kaalakea.
The relation between the two men wasn't immediately clear on Tuesday.
Contact Zaz Hollander at zhollander@adn.com.