Two stabbed in alleged hate crime

A white supremacist gang member allegedly stabbed and seriously injured a young black man and woman behind a Palm Springs Starbucks late Thursday night, stunning the tranquil desert community, authorities said.

The attack occurred after a street fight broke out just before 10 p.m., police said, when a crowd of 15 to 30 people -- divided by race -- gathered behind the coffee shop not far from Palm Canyon Drive and the city’s busy weekly street fair.

Police patrolling the fair arrived at the scene to find a black man and black woman, both 20, beaten and suffering from stab wounds, Palm Springs Police Sgt. Mitch Spike said.

At the scene, police arrested 28-year-old Mandie Kearns of Desert Hot Springs, who police said had a bloody knife in her pocket.

As she was being taken into custody, Kearns told police she was part of a white supremacist gang, Spike said.

“We think it was racially motivated,” said Spike, who said he could not elaborate on the subject of the dispute or what was said before the stabbing.

Kearns, who has been arrested numerous times on drug charges under a variety of names, was jailed Thursday on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and a hate crime charge. She is being held on $28,000 bail at the Palm Springs jail, officials said.

Fearing possible retaliation, police withheld the identities of the two victims. They said they were searching for other suspects, and thought most of those involved in the fight were from Palm Springs or nearby towns.

The woman suffered two collapsed lungs related to stab wounds to her back and a severe beating. The man is being treated for stab wounds to his back and a shoulder.

Spike said incidents of racial violence are rare in Palm Springs, and he is not aware of any surge in racial violence in the area.

According to a former friend, Kearns grew up in the Desert Hot Springs area, and at one time worked at a local department store and at a school as a food services worker after earning her high school equivalency certificate.

The friend, who did not want to be identified because she feared retaliation, described Kearns as a tough and fearless woman who became interested in a white supremacy gang after one of her friends was murdered.

Richard Cadarette, chairman of the Palm Springs Human Rights Commission, which has a hate crime task force, said he was appalled by the incident. In the last year, Cadarette said, 12 hate crimes were committed in Palm Springs, involving age discrimination, sexual orientation and racial issues.

“I was absolutely incredulous when I heard about it,” Cadarette said of Thursday’s incident. “Nothing like that has ever occurred that I’ve heard of.... White supremacy is something I’m completely unfamiliar with in this location.”

He noted that the commission has been working on a resolution for consideration by the City Council to make Palm Springs a “hate-free” community. “We would like to have the city be a haven for everybody,” he said.

In recent years, Riverside County sheriff’s officials have followed the activities of white supremacist groups in the unincorporated areas of the county.

Tom Freeman, executive officer for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, said those groups have been concentrated in the southwest part of the county and in unincorporated areas near Desert Hot Springs.

In 2003, the FBI and Riverside County formed a hate crimes task force. They arrested 18 alleged white supremacists in November 2004 and confiscated large caches of weapons, ammunition and Nazi paraphernalia. San Bernardino County officials carried out similar stings tracking white supremacist activity about the same time.

Freeman said hate crimes are down slightly this year in Riverside County. “But that certainly doesn’t mean we are going to lighten up on our enforcement activity,” he said. “At this point, it is on Sheriff [Bob] Doyle’s radar screen as a problem.”

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maeve.reston@latimes.com