Months of Harassment End in 2 Teens’ Arrests : Crime: Undercover police catch 17-year-olds throwing pennies at a Latina housekeeper waiting for bus. Hot coffee, rocks and racial slurs also were allegedly hurled since April. Hate crime charges considered.

FOUNTAIN VALLEY — Two Fountain Valley High School seniors may face hate crime charges for terrorizing a 24-year-old housekeeper since April, shouting racial slurs and hurling things at her as she sat at a bus stop waiting to go to work, police said Thursday.

The 17-year-old boys, both of them white, had driven by almost daily, throwing hot coffee, pennies, cans, tomatoes and rocks at Tomasa Sanchez as she sat on the bus bench at Warner Avenue and Newhope Street, police said.

Sanchez didn’t report the abuse to police until Monday, when an inch-long rock struck her below the eye.

Officers Aiden Naughton and Rick Freeman staked out the corner in an unmarked car Wednesday morning and arrested the boys after they swerved to the bus stop and threw pennies at Sanchez, Lt. Larry Griswold said.

She was so accustomed to the abuse that she saw them coming and ducked behind the bus bench, he said.

“While she was there, she was assaulted almost daily,” he said. “It happened when she was alone. It happened when she was with others, although she was always apparently the target.”

The teens, one from Santa Ana and one from Orange, were released to their parents Wednesday morning, Griswold said.

Police say they expect that the boys will be charged with assault and battery and possibly with a hate crime and assault with a deadly weapon. Police are preparing a report for the Orange County district attorney’s office, Griswold said.

Because Sanchez does not speak English, she told police she did not understand most of the things that the teens yelled at her. But police said the teens admitted to investigators that they yelled racial epithets.

“There were racial slurs,” Lt. Bob Mosley said. “We don’t know to what extent, but we do know there were some comments made. We will be looking at that.”

The persistence of the teens outraged the officers, who planned their stakeout the day Sanchez reported the crimes.

But their Tuesday morning attempt was timed wrong, and officers missed the boys, who usually attacked Sanchez between 6 and 7 a.m., Griswold said. Wednesday morning’s plan paid off.

Officers Naughton and Freeman parked an unmarked car across the street from the bus shelter at 6 a.m., Griswold said. A marked car waited down the block. At 6:30, Sanchez arrived to await the bus that takes her to her Huntington Beach housekeeping job.

Moments later, the officers saw the boys’ car veer over to the bus stop where the pennies flew at Sanchez.

“It was getting more serious because it wasn’t getting addressed,” Griswold said. “We’re very glad we arrested them.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think the single crime is unusual. The fact that it was repeated time and time again is unusual, and part of that is because she didn’t speak English and didn’t feel there was anyone she could report it to.”

Sanchez got a reprieve from the attacks for part of the summer, Mosley said, but “then the school year started up and they’ve done it every day of the school year.”

Police said the boys had never met Sanchez.

“Hopefully, this will put a stop to it,” Griswold said. “There are people out there who are the victims of these things and a lot of times these kids don’t think of that.”