Four indicted after attack on black man

San Jose Mercury News/August 19, 1999

Riverside -- Four members of a skinhead group with ties to the violent Hammerskin Nation white supremacist organization were indicted by a county grand jury in connection with an unprovoked bottle-and-knife attack on a black man in Riverside County.

District Attorney Grover Trask on Tuesday called the assault on a 23-year-old Murrieta resident "one of the most egregious incidents of racial violence that has occurred in Riverside County."

On March 17, the victim was taunted with racial slurs, chased, struck on the head with a beer bottle and slashed with a knife, prosecutors said.

The victim was apparently singled out by skinheads in the group because of his race and was attacked in full view of witnesses who failed to stop it, investigators said.

All four Temecula residents were charged with one count of attempted murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder.