Black Youth Admits He Lied About Hate Crime

An African American teenager who claimed that he was assaulted by three skinheads earlier this month admitted to authorities in Lancaster on Wednesday that he lied to avoid punishment for being in a fight with two black classmates.

The 15-year-old confessed to a Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective who confronted him with conflicting accounts of the attack. The boy said he had in fact gotten into a fight with two high school acquaintances and worried about damaging his braces.

“His mom put a lot of money into his teeth,” said Det. Brian Schoonmaker. “Instead of telling his mom he picked a fight and lost, he lied. He said he made up the story about the skinheads because it was believable.”

Until his admission, sheriff’s deputies were investigating the incident as one of three suspected hate crimes in the Antelope Valley in the last two weeks.

The teenager told deputies Jan. 14 that three skinheads drove up in a brown four-door sedan, jumped out and attacked him while shouting racial epithets.

He said the skinheads were all wearing red suspenders and shoelaces, described by Schoonmaker as “skinhead battle dress.”

“When I read the report, there was some suspicion because [the boy] was very vague--he gave generic ages and descriptions, but he was very specific on dress and hairstyles,” Schoonmaker said. “It raised a flag because his description was perfect enough to name them as skinheads, but vague enough to keep us from finding them.”

Despite his doubts, Schoonmaker put out an all-points bulletin, visited possible suspects’ homes and prepared to bring the teenager into the sheriff’s station to look at a lineup. But the youth’s friends began offering different accounts.

According to Schoonmaker, the teenager confronted a youth who had been phoning his sister and picked a fight. Another boy got involved and the two got the better of him, he said.

“While he was walking home he fabricated this skinhead thing,” Schoonmaker said. “His mom called the cops, she called the hate crimes task force, she called the media. She did the right thing--she was acting on trust--but he had violated that trust.”

Although hate crimes in the Antelope Valley declined last year, the area’s reputation as a center of racial conflict lingers. On Monday, a 32-year-old black man told sheriff’s detectives that he was attacked by four young men who shouted racial epithets in Spanish and shot him in the buttocks. Sunday night or Monday morning, vandals scrawled hate symbols on Temple Beth Knesset Bamidbar, the Antelope Valley’s only synagogue.

Of the 10 hate crimes Schoonmaker said he investigated in 1999, “two or three . . . were fabrications.”