Self-proclaimed White supremacist Calvin Lockner pleaded guilty on Sept. 22 in the brutal 2009 attack on a Black fisherman.
According to NBC Baltimore affiliate WBAL-TV, 76-year-old James Privott was attacked by three White men while attending a fishing trip with his wife at Fort Armistead Park near Baltimore in 2009.
Lockner, the alleged leader of the attack, pleaded guilty to first-degree assault, a hate crime charge and an attack on a corrections officer in May. He also faces time for carjacking Privott’s truck before the attack. If convicted, his prison sentence could span more than three decades.
“It’s safe to say that this is a plea agreement that we feel really good about because we’re going to get this person off the streets for 31 years,” State Attorney Joe Sviatko told WBAL-TV.
Authorities said 28-year-old Lockner, along with teens Emanual Miller and Zachary Watson, continually beat Privott with a stick while he was fishing. Reports say that the n-word was spewed during the beating, which Lockner claimed wouldn’t have happened if Privott “had been a White man.” Following the incident, Privott had a broken eye socket along with many other injuries.
Miller was sentenced in juvenile court early this year, while Watson’s trial is scheduled for Sept. 27.
Lockner is a convicted sex offender who claims ties to two White supremacist groups, including the notorious prison gang the Aryan Brotherhood, according to the Associated Press.
Baltimore City is about two-thirds Black and police actively monitor the city’s White supremacists.
“Baltimore’s a big city,” Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III told the AP during the time of the attack. “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.”
