COOS BAY - Sergio-Diego Overstreet, 21, thought he was going to be introduced to someone in Coos Bay's Mingus Park. Instead, several men beat him.

Overstreet contends he was the victim of a hate crime Thursday, because he's black. Police say they're skeptical, and they aren't treating it as such.

Overstreet found himself homeless recently in Coos Bay after he was forced to leave relatives' home in Bandon due to a disagreement. He had been staying at T.H.E. House, a homeless shelter, where he said some of the other tenants starting making racial slurs about him. He said he ignored them.

Then Thursday, Overstreet said, the verbal abuse turned physical.

He was in the park when a group of men, including one man who had been staying at the shelter, yelled at him to get out of town.

"The guy kept calling me a nigger," Overstreet said.

The 21-year-old said he again tried to ignore them until one of the men approached him. Overstreet said the man extended his hand.

"I think I'm going to shake someone's hand and meet a new person and he attacked me," Overstreet said.

Reports of the attack said the other men punched, stomped and kicked him. Overstreet is unclear on some of the details, but remembers just putting his arms across his face.

"I refused to fight," said Overstreet, who on Friday had a swollen cut under his right eye.

He said five men attacked him. Police say witnesses put the number at two or three. He contends the men identified themselves as white supremacists and said they didn't want him here.

Overstreet reported the assault to police. He said they helped him clean blood off his face and treated his wounds, but he doesn't feel they did enough to catch his attackers. Officers interviewed one of the men, but didn't arrest him.

A hate attack is a crime of intimidation under Oregon law. Intimidation in the first and second degree involve a person or people engaging in harassment or physical attacks based on  a victim's race, color, religion, national origin and sexual orientation. The victim can be a person or an institution, such as church.

Capt. Cal Mitts said his department takes this type of crime seriously, but Overstreet's case doesn't qualify in the department's opinion.

"Don't have anything like that involved in this crime at this point," he said.

Coos Bay Police Chief Rodger Craddock said investigators are skeptical about the attack being racially motivated, because the assault was apparently in retribution for Overstreet spending time with a teenage female relative of one of the attackers. Overstreet agrees that was an element in the assault, but doesn't believe it was his attackers only motivation.

Craddock said Overstreet has been in a couple of arguments before and since the assault, and had been caught shoplifting at a local grocery store, something Overstreet said was a misunderstanding, but admits to.

But as to the assault, Craddock said police haven't found evidence anyone directed slurs at Overstreet.

Craddock said the only person interviewed in the case to mention the slurs was the victim.

Overstreet said his father convinced him to come to Oregon because he was concerned about the violence in his son's Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., neighborhood. His father feared that with the drugs and violence there, Overstreet was going to get hurt. The 21-year-old got on a bus headed to the South Coast for a new beginning.

Now faced with homelessness and feeling he's a victim of a hate crime, Overstreet is trying to make his way back to Florida.

"It wasn't my choice to be here," he said.