Racial Hatred Called Motive in O.C. Stabbing

Two self-proclaimed white supremacists who had spent the evening verbally attacking minorities near the pier chased a Native American man on the beach and stabbed him 27 times, leaving him in critical condition, police said Monday.

The suspects, Erik Roy Anderson, 20, of Huntington Beach and a 17-year-old from La Palma, are regulars in a crowd of skinheads that frequent Main Street, throwing Nazi salutes, harassing minorities and frightening away customers, police and merchants said Monday.

The stabbing at 12:45 a.m. Saturday followed a night of trouble-making as the two and at least two other friends accosted a Latino couple, an Asian woman and a Jewish woman on the Huntington Beach Pier, singling them out and demanding to know if they believed in “white power,” Police Lt. Dan Johnson said.

The stabbing victim, 20, and two friends were sitting on a lifeguard tower at the city beach when Anderson and the 17-year-old confronted them, police said. The 20-year-old became nervous about the pair’s references to white power and tried to run away, police said. The La Palma teen grabbed him and punched him in the face, police said.

“Anderson then produced the knife and started stabbing him like crazy,” Johnson said. The victim’s friends, who are white, were not injured.

“It’s a horrendous crime, because it’s motivated by racism,” Johnson said. “These kids were out looking for minority groups to attack. They finally found one in the dark after verbally assaulting three people. They tried to murder another human being just because of the color of his skin.”

The victim, who works as a pizza cook and lives outside the county, had come to Huntington Beach with a friend to visit the friend’s girlfriend, said his mother, Toni. She asked that her last name not be used to protect her son.

He remained in critical but stable condition at UCI Medical Center in Orange on Monday with stab wounds to his chest, liver, back, neck, colon and hands. His heart had stopped in the ambulance, and paramedics had to take him to nearby Pacifica Hospital in Huntington Beach and revive him before airlifting him to UCI Medical Center, Johnson said.

“He’s strong,” said Toni, 40, who had been by her son’s side since the attack. “He just doesn’t want to die. He wants to get well now, so he’s fighting.”

She said her son “remembers everything” about the attack. “He gave me the thumbs up sign when I told him the good news, that they got the guys,” she said. “He’s a good person. He’s got a beautiful personality, a heart of gold. He’s not violent at all.”

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The attack was so frenzied that Anderson, who wielded the large hunting knife, mistakenly stabbed his own friend in the eye, Johnson said. The 17-year-old friend, whose name has not been released because of his age, staggered bleeding to the 100 block of Main Street and was spotted by police, who radioed paramedics.

He was treated for his wound and later booked into Orange County Juvenile Hall in connection with the stabbing, police said. Statements by him and two teenagers who were with the group led police to Anderson, Johnson said.

He was arrested at 4:10 p.m. Sunday at Pets Unlimited in the Westminster Mall, where he has worked as a clerk for the last month. He was booked into the Huntington Beach City Jail, and bail was set at $285,000. He was expected to be arraigned today.

Anderson told investigators that he is a member of the Ku Klux Klan in Riverside, police said. The 17-year-old contends to be a white supremacist but said he does not belong to an organized group, Johnson said.

Anderson’s mother, Debra Anderson, said she and her husband returned from out of town to learn their son had been arrested and their mobile home “ransacked” by police with a search warrant. Anderson had been homeless for two months and had moved back with his parents a month ago, she said.

“We were totally shocked,” Debra Anderson, 42, said Monday. “We were trying to give our son a second chance and help him out.”

She said she and her husband, Robert, are frustrated by a lack of information about the incident and said their work schedules have so far kept them from seeing their son. She described him as “pretty average, not outstanding.”

“He’s pretty typical of most teenagers today,” she said. “He tries to do the best he can.”

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A neighbor at Pacific Mobile Home Park said Anderson is the only child in a family of “very, very nice people.”

Another neighbor said, “His parents are great. They’re pretty stressed out about it. Bob was very upset and said that Erik was in trouble and would not be coming home for a while.”

Johnson said police on foot patrol had dealt with both suspects before on Main Street and had detained them, although neither had been arrested before. In the past year, he said, an increasing number of youths have espoused racism and caused trouble on Main Street.

However, he said most of the incidents so far have involved only verbal harassment or shoving. The most recent serious racial crime in Huntington Beach occurred in September 1994, when a middle-aged African American man was shot to death outside a McDonald’s restaurant on Beach Boulevard. Two skinheads were arrested.

The Orange County Human Relations Commission recorded 182 hate-related incidents and crimes in the county in 1994, the most recent year for which figures are available. One civil-rights leader has described Huntington Beach as “the largest nexus of hate groups in the county.”

The weekend attack chilled Main Street merchants, who have struggled recently to keep the loosely knit gang of skinhead youths away from their stores, some of which have been vandalized. The youths sport Nazi insignia and some have strolled into the Java Jungle Coffee House on Pacific Coast Highway and 6th Street wearing “Adolf Hitler World Tour” T-shirts, said coffee shop employee Phil Jacobsen, 28.

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“They’ve been coming here, but every time they come here, we call the police,” he said. “They’re not welcome here. Last week, they busted the side mirror off my car. They chase customers away. We don’t want to support hatred. That’s what we’re against.”

Jacobsen said about 20 of the skinheads hang out in the area, but he estimated there are only “four or five bad apples” among them.

James Naismith, 36, the owner of a newsstand at Main Street and Pacific Coast Highway, described Anderson as someone who has roamed Main Street for a long time.

“He was one of the regular skinheads who hung out here. He would come and go,” Naismith said. “He talked loud. He talked big. His voice stood out from the crowd, and he was annoying.

“They were always trying to intimidate somebody,” said Naismith, who said he saw Anderson walking on Main Street with his friends Friday night before the attack. “They walked around as a group. I didn’t like them being around here. They hurt the image of the town.”

Johnson said police are interested in hearing from anyone who may have had contact with Anderson or the 17-year-old suspect Friday or early Saturday in the downtown area.

“What we’re looking for is people who have experienced this racial harassment, so we can look into the hate crime aspect of it,” Johnson said.

Anyone with information should call Huntington Beach Police Sgt. Ron Burgess at (714) 536-5947 or Det. Jack Paholski at (714) 536-5941.

Times staff writers David Haldane, Lily Dizon and Lorenza Munoz contributed to this story.