VENTURA : Youth Pleads Guilty in Racial Incident

An 18-year-old Ventura gang member whom prosecutors describe as a white supremacist pleaded guilty Friday to making racial threats against a black Ventura High School security guard during a Jan. 26 basketball game.

Harold Cecil Lassiter will be sentenced March 21 in Ventura County Superior Court on one count of threatening a school employee. Prosecutors dismissed a charge against him of disturbing the peace at a school.

Lassiter had been held in the Ventura County Jail in lieu of a $5,000 bail since the basketball game incident, in which he threatened to get a gun and shoot a school security guard, authorities said.

The guard was trying to escort Lassiter and some of his friends away from the gymnasium, where the suspects had surrounded two 16-year-old black students and yelled racial epithets at them, Deputy Dist. Atty. Gary K. Barrett said.

Barrett said the district attorney’s office will recommend probation for Lassiter. “The conduct, just by itself, isn’t worth a trip to prison in our view,” Barrett said.

Lassiter told the judge that he is unemployed and a member of a gang that frequents the Ventura Avenue area, but denied being a white supremacist.

Judge Bruce A. Clark also agreed to allow Lassiter to be released on his own recognizance on the condition that he not come within 100 feet of Ventura High School and not associate with fellow gang members.