3rd Man Arrested in Attack on Migrants’ Camp

The husband of a woman whose purported rape prompted a vigilante baseball bat attack on an encampment of Latino migrants has been arrested and will be charged with assault with a deadly weapon, authorities said Tuesday.

Dan Stout, 35, of Alpine was arrested Monday in El Cajon, where he and his family moved after the Oct. 1 attack in the east San Diego County community of Alpine, sheriff’s spokesman Dan Greenblat said.

The assault, which left three migrants seriously injured, is being regarded as a hate crime, which could increase Stout’s sentence if he is convicted, Greenblat said.

The arrest of Stout--who witnesses said had joined with friends to threaten migrants for a week before the attack--brings the number of suspects in custody to three. Sheriff’s investigators are still looking for at least two other men, sources said.

Stout reportedly went to the creekbed encampment Sept. 25 and said he was going to “bust some heads” because his wife had been raped by “Mexicans” the night before.

Later, on Oct. 1, six to eight Anglo men wielding baseball bats stampeded through the camp, seriously injuring two Mexican men and one Guatemalan national who were not involved in the purported rape.

Sheriff Jim Roache announced last week that no charges will be filed in the alleged rape of Stout’s wife.

She has said she was raped by one of three men who had pulled her into some bushes, but suspects and witnesses said she shared beers with the men and had consensual sex with several of them.

Stout, who will be arraigned today, has two convictions, one for spousal abuse last April and one for battery in 1990, court records show. He is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail, Aragon said.