Two Say Suspect Bragged About Attack at Creekbed

Dan Stout--the husband of a woman whose allegations of rape prompted a vigilante baseball bat attack on an Alpine migrant encampment--boasted about the beating to two neighbors after the fact, a sheriff’s detective testified at a preliminary hearing Wednesday.

But the links of some of the other four defendants to the Oct. 1 attack remained somewhat hazy after two of the victims testifying Wednesday were unable to pick out their assailants from the row of five defendants in the courtroom.

After the attack by bat-wielding white men left three Latino migrants seriously injured on Oct. 1, Stout, 35, allegedly told one neighbor, “You would have been proud of me, the way I was swinging the bat at those Mexicans,” Detective Robert Guaderrama said Wednesday. The Stouts later moved to El Cajon.

The former neighbor, Lance Anderson, was one of three people Stout tried to recruit to “beat the Mexicans in the creekbed,” and who reported the conversations to detectives after the beating, Guaderrama said.

Anderson also said Stout had asked him before the attack “if he owned any guns, and to bring them with him when they go down” to the creekbed, Guaderrama testified, reading from the transcript of his conversation with Anderson.

Richard Garza, another former neighbor of the Stouts--who were living in an apartment complex a short distance from the creekbed encampment--told Guaderrama that Stout tried to recruit him to help retaliate against the migrants, and that on Oct. 2, Stout “had talked to Mr. Garza about the way they took care of business down in the creekbed,” Guaderrama said.

Stout’s wife alleged that she was raped by one of three Latino men who pulled her into some bushes near the encampment the night of Sept. 24. Witnesses told investigators, however, that Kim Stout willingly drank beer and had sex with several men that night, and the District Attorney’s office decided not to prosecute the rape.

Stout faces charges along with four other men in connection with the beating, which seriously injured two Mexican men and one Guatemalan national, none of whom were present when the incident involving Stout’s wife occurred.

Also in custody are Ronald Aishman, 26, of Spring Valley; Charles Edward Nocita, 28, of El Cajon; Ronald Inman, 22, of El Cajon, and Christopher Hastings, 21, of El Cajon.

All have been charged with assault with a deadly weapon, assault with great bodily injury, conspiracy to commit those crimes, and committing a hate crime.

Hastings has admitted to driving others to the crime scene, but says he cannot identify any of them, his attorney said. Aishman, Inman and Nocita have all been identified by a witness and two of the victims in photo lineups, but some of those identifications were challenged by defense attorneys Wednesday as far from solid.

Although beating victim Oscar Mendoza had previously picked Aishman out of a photo line-up, he was unable to pick him out of a live lineup Monday, and could not identify him in the courtroom.

Jose Luis Lopez, another beating victim who testified Wednesday about how he was attacked as he stood on a sidewalk above the Alpine creekbed encampment, told the court that the man who attacked him was not present in the room.

Lopez said he only got a quick look at his principal attacker. Another witness told Guaderrama that he saw six white men, but could not identify any of them because it was getting dark when the 7 p.m. attack occurred, and he was far away.

Leobardo Zarco--the third victim--picked Inman out of a photo lineup, but also stated he thought his assailant was a “cholo,” or Mexican American, a point that Inman’s attorney highlighted Wednesday.

A third witness, who was not available to testify, picked Nocita and Stout out of photo lineups.

The preliminary hearing continues today, and will determine whether or not El Cajon Municipal Judge Larrie Brainard binds the five men over for trial.