Vallejo student slowly recovering from beating VALLEJO

After being beaten nearly to death in a video-recorded incident at his Vallejo high school, a 17-year-old student and basketball player was recovering slowly Sunday from serious head injuries at a Walnut Creek hospital, one day after doctors were able to remove him from a ventilator.

"They're limiting his communication. He needs his rest," said Donna Williams, the mother of the student, Bryant Lee. "He still has a long way to go."

Meanwhile, Vallejo police were looking for additional suspects in the vicious attack on Lee at Jesse Bethel High after arresting six alleged gang members on suspicion of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. School officials released footage of the beating in hopes of identifying others who were involved.

Police identified four of the men as brothers within Vallejo's Tili family, whose members have been involved - as either suspects or victims - in a string of high-profile violent incidents dating back several years. One brother is in prison for murder; another was shot dead by police.

"From all indications, this is a family that has a lengthy criminal history here in Vallejo, and we're hopeful these four will be prosecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law," said Jason Hodge, a spokesman for the Vallejo City Unified School District.

"When you watch the video," Hodge said, "it's pretty clear that Bryant was probably two or three kicks away from death. It's just a miracle the boy is still alive."

According to school and police officials, Bryant was assaulted while standing with other varsity basketball players at about 4:30 p.m. Thursday at Jesse Bethel High. The players were waiting for practice to begin. The suspects arrived in two vans, and one punched a 16-year-old girl, prompting Lee and his teammates to intervene, Hodge said.

"At some point," he said, "they encircled Bryant and unloaded on him, beating him unconscious."

The suspects apparently didn't realize they were near one of about 60 surveillance cameras that school officials installed last year on three campuses, at a cost of about $500,000. Authorities quickly identified the Tili brothers, Hodge said, and police arrested them within minutes - as they were pulling into the driveway of their home.

Arrested were 26-year-old twins Abraham and Alexander Tili and 18-year-old twins Ray and Ron Tili, along with Kevin Young, 18, and a 16-year-old boy who was not identified.

Reached Sunday by telephone, a man who said he was the Tili brothers' father declined to talk about his sons.

The brothers are well known in Vallejo. When they were 12 years old, Ray and Ron Tili suffered serious burns when their home was firebombed in September 2002 in an attack that police connected to a nasty dispute between the Tilis and another Vallejo family, the Strongs. The feud was also cited in a brawl that delayed a Bethel High football game two years later.

Alexander Tili was wounded in a drive-by shooting near his home in July 2005, and a year later was charged with shooting and wounding three juveniles.

Another brother, 22-year-old Vasega Tili, was convicted of murdering a Vallejo man during a November 2004 confrontation at a Denny's restaurant in Emeryville. He is appealing a 50-years-to-life sentence. A witness to the murder later turned up dead.

And Fonotaga "Junior" Tili, while wearing a mask, was shot dead by Vallejo police officers while fleeing from a takeover robbery of a Toys R Us store in May 2005. He was 20, and he, too, had been shot before.