Deputies Investigate Cross-Burning in Temple City

Sheriff’s deputies are investigating allegations that a group of neo-Nazi “skinheads” in Temple City may have been responsible for burning a tiny wooden cross Thursday on the lawn of a neighboring black family.

Spencer Stewart and his wife, Patricia, both RTD bus drivers, said their eldest child was leaving for school about 8:30 a.m. when he spotted the charred cross, about nine inches high, on their lawn. The cross appeared to be made of miniature toy Lincoln Logs.

“I’m a peaceful person,” Spencer Stewart, 41, said. “But I feel now that my home front is in danger.”

The family, which has lived in the predominantly Anglo community for about a year, told police that they had recently noticed several young men, who often wore swastikas and combat boots, living nearby.

Officers said they went to the home on East Longden Avenue described by the Stewarts and found a set of the toy logs. The police confiscated several of the wooden pieces and took them to the sheriff’s crime lab to determine whether they are of the same brand found on the Stewarts’ lawn.

No arrests were made, police said.

“The incident, including the people living in that house, are under investigation,” said Lt. Phil Bullington of the sheriff’s Temple City substation. “But so far we haven’t found anyone, including those people, who claim to have any knowledge of this.”

On Thursday, three men, all in their early 20s, identified themselves as “skinheads” to a reporter who visited the home where police confiscated the toy set. The men said they follow neo-Nazi ideology, but deny any involvement in the cross-burning.

It was the county’s first reported cross-burning of the year, according to officials for the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission. In 1988, there were 267 hate crimes reported, including three cross-burnings. Last year’s figures are not yet available, but the commission’s executive director, Eugene Mornell, said the numbers will probably reflect an increase.

The incident occurred one block away from the scene of what commission officials say was one of the most notorious hate crimes that occurred since the county began keeping records a decade ago.

On Dec. 6, 1980, during the celebration of Hanukkah, an arson fire swept through Temple Beth David in the 9600 block of East Longden Avenue, causing more than $100,000 in damage. Michael Steven Canale and Donald Nielson, both self-professed members of the American Nazi Party, later were convicted of setting the blaze.

Temple City, a community of 30,000 people in the western San Gabriel Valley, has about 135 black residents. Of the 4,330 students in the Temple City Unified School District, 43 are black--and three of those are the Stewarts’ children.

Until now, however, they said they had never felt any animosity.

“I told my kids that these are people with sick minds,” Patricia Stewart, 32, said. “Just pray for them when you say your prayers at night.”