Southeast / Long Beach

BOMBER SENTENCED: A man who hurled a flaming Molotov cocktail into the Long Beach home of an African American family in April was sentenced to nine years in state prison.

Raymond E. Shreffner, 26, pleaded no contest last month to charges of arson and using an explosive device in the racially motivated attack.

Shreffner, who sports a shaved head, has been called a skinhead by police, although the prosecutor said the man has no apparent affiliation with any white-supremacist group. Shreffner, who lived down the street from the family, verbally insulted the woman who lives in the house several days before he approached the house in the middle of the night, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ellen Aragon said.

The burning beer bottle shattered a living-room window and charred most of the room. No one inside was seriously injured, but the grown son of the woman who lived there burned his feet extinguishing the fire. In addition, the woman’s 15-year-old daughter shot Shreffner three times below the waist while he remained in the driveway.