BALTIMORE (AP) — A white supremacist accused of beating a 76-year-old black man has a tattoo of Adolf Hitler on his stomach with the words “He Lives” beneath it, and uses the Nazi dictator’s last name as a nickname, according to police and court documents.
Calvin E. Lockner, 28, was ordered held without bail Wednesday morning. He’s been charged with a long list of crimes including attempted murder, carjacking and assault, and prosecutors can seek tougher penalties under Maryland’s hate crime law.
Lockner told police that the attack early Tuesday on James A. Privott, who had been fishing with his wife in a city park beneath the Francis Scott Key Bridge, “wouldn’t have happened if he was a white man,” court documents show.
Lockner, a convicted sex offender, has other racist tattoos and told police he was a member of two white supremacist groups, including the notorious prison gang the Aryan Brotherhood.
When Lockner was taken into custody, he said, “I’m sorry I did it,” the documents show.
Lockner and two other white men shouted racial slurs as they kicked Privott to the ground, punched him in the face and hit him with a baseball bat, the documents show.
The men stole $19 from Privott’s wallet and drove off in his sport utility vehicle, which was equipped with a theft-monitoring device. Police tracked down the vehicle, which overturned and crashed after the driver fled. The men ran off, but officers found Lockner with the help of a witness, police said.
Lockner will be represented by a public defender but has not yet been assigned one, a Maryland Public Defender’s Office spokeswoman said.
Police had not yet found the two other suspects Wednesday afternoon.
Privott (pronounced pruh-VAHT’), of suburban Windsor Mill, suffered serious head trauma and lost two teeth and may also have broken an eye socket bone. He was in fair condition Wednesday at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, a spokeswoman said. His wife was not injured.
Privott’s stepdaughter said he was doing OK and that police had asked the family not to speak to reporters during the investigation.
Baltimore is about two-thirds black, and police monitor the city’s active white supremacists, Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said. Many are affiliated with a white prison gang called Dead Man Inc., although Lockner was not part of that gang, police said.
“Baltimore’s a big city,” Bealefeld said. “Just as assuredly as we have Bloods and Crips, we have DMI and we have Aryan Nation and we have outlaw motorcycle gangs and we have MS-13.”
Mayor Sheila Dixon said she met with Privott in the hospital Tuesday, and he told her about good fishing spots around the city and suggested the park he was attacked in may need better lighting and security.
“People should have the right to go out … fishing, relaxing, in a great park in the city,” Dixon said. “His family is understandably shaken from this and by the violence and what was said to him and what was done to him.”
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