Man, 18, Pleads Guilty to Skinhead Attacks on Blacks

Saying that he was ashamed of himself, an 18-year-old man pleaded guilty before a federal judge Monday to taking part in skinhead attacks on two African Americans in Lancaster.

The street assaults were carried out in 1966 by the Nazi Low Riders, a Southern California skinhead group. One victim was beaten and the other was stabbed in the back.

Federal investigators said the group was bent on driving blacks out of the predominantly white community through a campaign of terror and violence.

Outside the courtroom Monday, defendant Eric Dillard’s mother wiped tears from her eyes and told reporters her son was not a racist.

“He just had some anger in him that was misdirected,” Valerie Stetson said.

Dillard, who is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, is to be sentenced on the civil rights violations Oct. 26 by Chief U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

Another youth, Danny Edward Williams, 24, who also expressed remorse for his actions, was sentenced by Hatter on June 1 to 57 months in prison.

In one attack on April 28, 1996, Dillard admitted that he and Williams cornered an African American man, Eric Miller, outside a video rental store on West Avenue L.

Dillard said he repeatedly punched Miller while Williams swung a baseball bat at the man. As Miller fled back into the store, Dillard yelled racial epithets at him.

On July 8, 1996, Dillard, Williams and a juvenile co-conspirator carried out another racist attack, Dillard acknowledged in his guilty plea. The victim was Marcus Cotton, 16, who was walking with his teenage cousin. The assailants jumped out of the car, knocked Cotton to the ground and began beating and kicking him, yelling “white power.” During the course of the attack, Cotton, who is black, was stabbed four times.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael Gennaco said Monday that the Nazi Low Riders are still active in the Antelope Valley, Orange County and inside California prisons.