Area Leaders Angry Over Inmate’s Escape

The escape from a minimum-security facility of a reputed skinhead, accused in the attacks on two African Americans in Lancaster last year, has several leaders in the community alarmed.

“It is beyond us why a man suspected of such crimes would be put into a minimum-security facility,” Darren Parker, chairman of the Antelope Valley Human Relations Hate Crime Task Force, said Friday. “We’re appalled that citizens of the Antelope Valley are once again under threat from this man.”

Federal authorities said this week that Danny Edward Williams, who allegedly used a baseball bat and a machete in racially motivated beatings of two men, escaped Jan. 18 from a minimum-security facility in Pasadena where he was being treated for a methamphetamine addiction.

The 130-bed nonprofit facility where Williams was staying has no guards and no locked gates. Patients there are allowed to leave the facility, said Jim Stillwell, executive director of the Impact Residential Drug Treatment Center.

Williams, who wears the tattooed figures of a Viking and hooded Ku Klux Klan member on his shoulder and arm, was indicted by federal authorities in September for violating the two men’s civil rights. Federal authorities alleged that Williams conspired with members of the “Nazi Lowriders,” a reputed skinhead group, to keep African Americans from using public streets.

“I’m really feeling let down,” said Linda Thompson Taylor, president of the Antelope Valley chapter of the NAACP. “Why did it take so long to get the word out he had escaped? It’s almost like they didn’t care about it.”

Gary Auer, an FBI supervisor, said he could not explain why it took until Wednesday for the agency to alert the public that Williams had escaped. He added, however, that the FBI notified the public a day after it had learned Williams had disappeared.

He also said authorities sometimes try to locate suspects quietly before alerting the public.

U.S. District Court Judge Terry Hatter allowed Williams to seek treatment before his trial, which was scheduled for March. Assistant U.S. Atty. Mike Gennaco said he argued against sending Williams to the facility because he considered Williams a flight risk.

“I don’t think the judge should be blamed,” Gennaco said. “The onus was on Williams. He was allowed to go there and he left and now we’re going to catch him and I don’t think he’ll get another chance to leave like that again.”