A group of at least a dozen teenagers assaulted six people in two separate incidents, one of them possibly a bias crime, after the Britney Spears' concert in Newark Saturday night.

Bobby Daniel Caldwell, 36, and his partner Joshua Kehoe, 25, both from Kearny, said they were returning to their car parked near Raymond Boulevard and Broad Street from the Prudential Center at approximately 11 p.m. when a group of 15 to 20 teenage girls and boys approached them from the opposite direction and then punched and kicked them as they yelled an anti-gay slur.After they stole Kehoe's cellphone, the group then assaulted four female college students who had been walking behind them, Kehoe said. They fled with one of the girls' purses, said Police Director Garry McCarthy during an interview today.

Detective Hubert Henderson said the college students did not suffer serious injuries.

Caldwell was not as lucky. He suffered a broken jaw that doctors had to fix by inserting two metal plates and wires, Kehoe said. For the next several weeks, Caldwell has to subsist on a liquid diet, Kehoe said.

"I have to drink a sippy cup, like two-year-old," Caldwell mumbled through his wired jaw as he sat in their Kearny apartment.

Kehoe said the crowd deliberately targeted him and his partner because they were gay. McCarthy said while they have not determined if it was a bias incident, investigators were busy today interviewing the victims and looking at surveillance footage.

"If it turns out that it is a bias crime, then it is what it is" he said.

Kehoe said he was positive it was a bias incident because they used an epithet commonly used to demean homosexuals.

"No matter how you look at it, it is a hate crime," he said.

Paul Loriquet, a spokesman for the Essex County Prosecutor's office, said the prosecutor's bias unit had already joined in the investigation. Security videos taken in the area on Saturday night are being reviewed.

Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, a Montclair-based gay rights organization, said his group is looking into the attack.

"You have two people have the living daylights beaten out of them, while they are called a (epithet)," he said. "If that's not a hate crime then I don't know what it is."

Within minutes of the attack, Caldwell was taken to University Hospital with his jaw broken in two places. Kehoe said he had to wait for police for 45 minutes at the site of the assault even though several squad cars passed the scene. Kehoe said a security guard at a nearby building and two passersby called police, with one of them even flagging down a patrol car that drove away.

"It was like you were in a town with no police and people on the loose," Kehoe said.

McCarthy and Mayor Cory Booker said police were busy at that time breaking up a crowd of 400 to 500 teenagers fighting in front of the Sugar Rays nightclub about seven blocks away on Park Place. The crew that attacked Kehoe, Caldwell and the college girls was a splinter group from the mob fighting in front of the nightclub, McCarthy said. that is.

"Unfortunately, our officers were responding to what was called a general call for support, so numerous of our officers fled to the scene of what was happening, and left this individual vulnerable to this attack by these children," said Booker, referring to Caldwell, who suffered the brunt of the abuse.

Sugar Rays, adjacent to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, was having an alcohol-free teen event from about 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday, according to Miles Berger, one of the owners.

Berger said he didn't know if any Sugar Rays patrons were involved in the latest violence.

"Whether they went to Sugar Rays or not, they have to be found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," he said.

Berger also owns the Robert Treat Hotel across the street, where violence erupted after an event on Feb. 22 in which three men were shot outside the ballroom where a late-night hip-hop dance party was taking place.

Authorities said the shooting was sparked by a dispute. Jasper Kane, 21, of Newark was arrested on March 13 in connection with the shooting.

Both Booker and McCarthy insisted future events would not spark similar problems, once legislation requiring a police security review is approved by the city council. McCarthy said he expected the council's approval may come as soon as next week. The ordinance would require event organizers to submit a security plan, and apply for a permit.