4 Alleged ‘Skinheads’ Mislabeled, Hearing Told

A Glendora couple testified in court Monday that four people who looked like “skinheads” assaulted them in a supermarket parking lot last May after one of the men with a shaved head screamed “White Power! White Rule!”

But a lawyer for one of the four called the encounter “just a parking-lot argument” and said they had been mislabeled as “skinheads.”

The testimony came on the opening day of a preliminary hearing for Scott Robert Wilson, 28, of West Covina; Timothy Robert Zaal, 25, of Glendora; William Killackey, 21, of Yorba Linda and Killackey’s sister, Amy, 19, of West Covina. All four are charged with felony assault and violation of the state’s civil rights law in connection with the incident.

Wilson is being held after failing to post bail. The other three are free on $50,000 bail.

Manochehr Sadri said he was inside a supermarket in La Verne on a Sunday afternoon in May when a man at the entrance raised his right arm and screamed: “White Power! White Rule!”

Sadri testified at Pomona Municipal Court Monday that he and his wife then left the market, but the four continued to scream racial epithets at them near the store entrance. As he and his wife were pushing a shopping cart and their 2-month-old baby through the parking lot toward their car, the group followed and accosted them near the vehicle.

Speaking Persian

Sadri, 30, and his wife, Farzaneh, 28, told the court that they were speaking in Persian when they heard themselves being mocked. One of the men, Mrs. Sadri said, “was making fun of our accent,” and apparently thought they were Jewish.

She said one man made an anti-Semitic remark about her child.

The name-calling, the husband and wife testified, led to an assault in which he was kicked and beaten and she was punched in the face. Manochehr Sadri suffered minor injuries in the alleged attack.

Attorney Ted Meeder, who represents Zaal, said the defendants have been mislabeled as neo-Nazi skinheads.

He said Zaal, whom Manochehr Sadri identified as the man who shouted “White Power! White Rule!” is not a member of any political group. “It was just a parking-lot argument,” the attorney said.

Meeder said the defendants had stopped at the store to get some food for a barbecue after attending a benefit concert for the homeless at which they had picked up some “White Power” cards that were being passed out.

In court Monday, two of the defendants wore business suits and short-cropped hair. The lone female defendant wore a navy blue dress.

But Manochehr Sadri said the defendants were dressed much differently during the encounter. Two of the men were shirtless and had tattoos, he testified, and all wore their hair so short that it appeared their heads had been shaved. Mrs. Sadri said Amy Killackey and Wilson wore what appeared to be “combat boots.”

Manochehr Sadri said the assault began when Wilson attempted to kick him. Sadri said he grabbed Wilson’s leg and both men ended up on the ground, struggling for eight or nine minutes.

Kicked, Punched

During the scuffle, he was repeatedly kicked and hit on the head, Sadri said. Meanwhile, Mrs. Sadri testified that one of the assailants hit her with his open hand as she was screaming.

Manochehr Sadri said that Leonard Washington, a school security guard, intervened to try to help him but the struggle continued until police arrived.

Testimony at the hearing will continue today.