A Wesleyan student who had been visiting friends at Harvard this weekend was assaulted early yesterday morning in the Yard.

Daniel Gartner, 18, was walking with several Harvard students at about 2 a.m. when they were stopped by a group of teenagers who proceeded to harass them.

"One of them came up behind me and punched me in the head," Gartner said. "He said, 'What's up? Do you want to start something?"

Although Gartner said he "promptly ran away," the assailant caught up with him near Johnston Gate.

"He hit me a couple of times and kicked me," Gartner said. "I assume he just walked away or ran back to his friends. The rest of the kids didn't do anything."

Richard H. Dinh '98, who lives in Straus Hall, said he ran into the same teenagers a few minutes before the assault on Gartner.

"I went out to Johnston Gate to get a pizza and there were about six guys--teenagers, I guess. One of them pushed me and yelled an obscenity at me," Dinh said.

Dinh said he was able to walk away, but when he returned with a pizza he saw Gartner and his friends surrounded by the group.

"I saw a girl screaming 'Help! Help!' and saw those guys with her," Dinh said. "That's when I went to get my friends."

"We saw two girls and a person [Gartner] lying on the ground. The girls were pretty shook up," said Adam T. Hayes '98, who Dinh recruited to help.

"The guy looked really dazed," Hayes said. "He wasn't bloody or anything, but he looked pretty scared."

Gartner had been staying with Catherine Deakins '98 in Thayer for the weekend. Deakins said she was with Gartner at the time of the assault and was able to call Harvard police after the teenagers left.

Though the police drove Gartner and Deakins all around Cambridge and Somerville looking for the assailants, they only went through the Yard once, Deakins said.

"So we didn't see them, and we went down to the Harvard police station and filed a report," she said.

The incident was recorded in the police blotter as an assault and battery by 5-7 males.

Another assault on nearby Oxford St., also by 5-7 males, was reported at the exact same time.

No one at the Harvard police station yesterday would speculate as to whether the two incidents were related.

The police also refused to release a copy of the incident report