Police Arrest 2 Teens in Alleged Hate Beating of Black Fisherman

BALTIMORE – Two teenagers were charged as adults Thursday in what police say was the racially motivated beating of an elderly black fisherman.

Zachary Watson, 17, and Emmanuel Miller, 16, told police they were with Calvin E. Lockner when he attacked the man early Tuesday in a city park on the Patapsco River, but they claimed not to have participated in the beating, according to charging documents.

Lockner, 28, a white supremacist who uses "Hitler" as a nickname and has a tattoo of the Nazi leader, was arrested shortly after the beating. He told police the attack would not have happened if the victim had been white, court documents show.

The three suspects, who are white, were charged with attacking the victim because of his race. Maryland's hate crime law allows prosecutors to seek tougher penalties for crimes motivated by race.

James A. Privott, 76, was punched, kicked and struck with a baseball bat while his assailants yelled racial slurs, according to charging documents in Lockner's case. The three fled in Privott's SUV, which crashed after police tracked it down with the aid of a theft-recovery device, the court files show.

Privott lost two teeth and suffered a possible broken eye socket. He was released from the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center Wednesday night, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Miller told police that Lockner had used a bat in the attack, while Watson said the victim was beaten with a sledgehammer. Miller also said Lockner had used racial slurs, the documents show.

Lockner, who told police he was a member of white supremacist groups including the Aryan Brotherhood, has been incarcerated for most of this decade.

He was charged in 2000 with raping a 38-year-old woman and a 4-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty to second-degree sex offense in the attack on the woman and was sentenced to eight years in prison, records show.

He received another two years in 2007 for violating his probation by failing to register as a sex offender, prosecutors said. He also spent a few weeks in jail this year after he was accused of beating his wife. The charges were dropped.