2 Teenagers Charged With Hate Crime in Attack

Prosecutors charged two 16-year-olds from the Antelope Valley with a hate crime Thursday in connection with an attack earlier this week on two black teenagers, one of whom was slashed with a machete.

The boys, who immediately before the alleged assault shouted, “White power!” were described by authorities as white supremacist “skinhead-types.”

The teenagers are scheduled for arraignment this morning at Sylmar Juvenile Hall. In addition to the hate-crime charge, which could add up to four years to their sentences, they each are accused of single counts of assault with a deadly weapon in the Monday night attack in Lancaster.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol J. Najera of the district attorney’s Hate Crimes Division said she will seek to try the two teenagers as adults because the alleged machete attack involved force likely to cause serious bodily injury.

Another man, identified as 22-year-old Danny Williams of Lancaster, was about to be released from custody Thursday after prosecutors were unable to find sufficient evidence linking him to the crime, Najera said. But just before his release, sheriff’s deputies discovered he had an outstanding traffic warrant and acted to hold him until Monday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John K. Spillane said Williams is still a suspect in the case and he expects deputies to find enough evidence to rearrest him.

“We just have to separate the facts from the innuendo and the rumors,” he said. He added that authorities suspect Williams may have been involved in other crimes but could not say if they were race-related.

Sheriff’s Lt. Tom Pigott said investigators have yet to discover the weapon used and lacked a positive identification of Williams.

The victim, 16-year-old Marcus Cotton, was slashed four times, receiving a deep cut in his right arm and more superficial wounds to his back and shoulders. He was treated at an Antelope Valley hospital and released.

Marcus was walking his cousin, Angela McKenzie, 17, toward her home at about 11 p.m. when the youths drove past in a car and yelled, “White power!” and gave Nazi salutes, the cousins told sheriff’s deputies.

After turning the car around, the assailants tried to run down the cousins, who attempted to sprint away, they said. Climbing out of the car, one of the teens allegedly spit on Angela and pushed her out of the way when she tried to help Marcus, who was being punched, kicked and slashed with the machete, prosecutors said.

Najera said the teens’ actions supported the filing of hate-crime charges, for which prosecutors must prove the assault was motivated by the victims’ “race, color, religion, nationality, country of origin, ancestry, gender, disability or sexual orientation.”

Monday night’s machete attack was the third racially motivated assault in the Antelope Valley in just over a year. The previous attacks included a screwdriver assault on a black student at Antelope Valley High School earlier this year, and a February 1995 incident in which a group of men described as skinheads fired shots into a parked car occupied by four African Americans, including a year-old girl.

A report by the county human rights commission, “Skinheads in the Antelope Valley,” estimated that 40 to 100 potentially violent skinheads live in the area, which has undergone dramatic demographic shifts since 1980.

This week’s incident prompted African American activists to complain that city officials have ignored the report, which included recommendations that the city embark on a program to combat hate crimes, including sponsoring community forums, diversity hiring and training for law enforcement officers and a hate-crime policy for public schools.

Williams’ grandmother Ann Williams, accompanied by the mother of one of the teenagers, awaited Williams’ release Thursday outside the sheriff’s holding cell at Lancaster Municipal Court.

She said her grandson, who she cared for after his father’s death in 1986, is not a skinhead or racist. “He’s never been like that,” she said. “He’s always been a perfectly fine young man. He could never do this.”

“They got a high-profile crime and they want to blame somebody,” complained the teenager’s mother. Her son “told me he was nowhere near the area,” she said.