An 80-year-old man whose beating at the Redondo Beach Elks Lodge was captured on video is suing the lodge and two of its former members.
Joseph Lordeon of Redondo Beach, in a lawsuit filed last week in Los Angeles Superior Court, accused the lodge, former Exalted Ruler Nashana Steele and her husband, Lamont Steele, of battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, premises liability, negligence and elder abuse.
The suit seeks unspecified damages.
Security camera footage of the May 5 encounter, obtained by the Southern California News Group, purportedly shows Lamont Steele searching the lodge for the MAGA hat-wearing Loerden and then repeatedly striking him in the lobby.
“This violent assault was wholly unprovoked,” said former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, who is assisting Lordeon with the case. “Why anyone would do such a thing to an elderly and frail man is beyond me. And to think the perpetrator and his wife were officers of that club. That makes it even more egregious.”
Neither Nashana Steele, who has resigned from her position as exalted ruler and no longer attends the Redondo Beach lodge, nor Lamont Steele, whom the Elks have permanently banished, returned phone calls seeking comment.
Officials with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, headquartered in Chicago, have declined to discuss the alleged assault because it is a criminal matter.
“The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks has always considered our lodges to be places where members and their guests can feel comfortable and enjoy social opportunities in a caring and congenial environment,” spokesperson Rick Gathen told SCNG in June. “There is no place for acts of violence within our lodges and the reports as alleged are both troubling and unacceptable.”
Founded in 1868, the BPOE has nearly 1 million members who gather at 2,000 lodges across the U.S. and abroad. The Elks provide charitable services aimed at building stronger communities, sponsoring college scholarships, youth basketball teams, drug awareness programs and the like.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office has charged Lamont Steele with felony assault and elder abuse. He is awaiting trial.
Lordeon told the Southern California News Group his ordeal began about 4:30 p.m. on Cinco de Mayo when he visited the 70-year-old Elks Lodge on the eastern edge of the oceanfront Veterans Park to meet some friends.
On his way out about 15 minutes later, he said, a lodge member invited him to have some food at a private party attended by about 45 people in another bar at the north end of the lodge.
Lordeon, a real estate agent, was handed a plate, helped himself to some salad from a buffet table and started to walk away. However, Nashana Steele blocked Lordeon and ordered him to leave the lodge because she was upset that he was wearing a Donald Trump hat, the lawsuit states. Lordeon can be seen in the video having what appears to be a heated discussion with Nashana Steele.
Lordeon left the dining area, but not the lodge, and sat on a sofa in the lobby to eat his food.
Nashana Steele sought out Lamont Steele, who was on a patio at the lodge, to kick Lordeon out, describing him to her husband as wearing a Trump hat, the suit states.
However, a seven-page, heavily redacted Redondo Beach police report offers a conflicting motive for the attack, stating someone told Lamont Steele a man had assaulted his wife.
The security camera video shows Lamont Steele and others purportedly scouring the lodge for the man and then finding him in the lobby.
Lamont Steele told police he asked the man if he had touched his wife, to which the man replied “f— you.” This upset him further, prompting him to allegedly punch the man once with a closed fist, according to the report obtained by the Southern California News Group.
Lordeon has denied touching Nashana Steele.
Lordeon, who sustained a large facial wound and rib injuries, said Elks member Karen Shonka, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department cold-case homicide detective, removed bits of salad from his mouth after the attack so he wouldn’t choke and called 911 for an ambulance.
Security camera video allegedly shows Lamont Steele, in white hat, striking 80-year-old Redondo Beach Elks Lodge member Joseph Lordeon on May 5, 2024 (Vimeo screengrab)
A Redondo Beach police officer who viewed the video of the incident said in the report that the assault was unprovoked, adding that Lordeon was punched three times, picked up from the couch, and pushed to the floor. The attacker then stood over Lordeon, slapped him with an open hand, left the lodge and drove home.