Cross Burnings

As police arrested a third Huntington Beach teenager suspected of burning a cross outside the home of David Shostak, the relieved homeowner said Saturday that he is trying to put the hate crime horror behind him, with the help and support of neighbors and strangers alike. "It's just been overwhelming," Shostak said of the cards, flowers and unexpected visits his family has received. "People are reaching out. . . . People we don't even know are saying they care about us.

Two Huntington Beach teenagers have been arrested in connection with the burning of a cross outside a Jewish family's home this week, Huntington Beach police said Friday. Daniel Patrick Carr, 18, of Huntington Beach was arrested about 3 p.m. Friday in Fountain Valley on suspicion of a hate crime, arson and burning a religious symbol. He is being held at Huntington Beach City Jail in lieu of $50,000 bail.

A reward of up to $3,000 was offered Thursday to help authorities find and convict whoever burned a 6-foot wooden cross outside the home of a Jewish family in Huntington Beach. "When one finds a cross burning in 1998 in an Orange County community, it is something to take very seriously," said Joyce Greenspan, director of the Anti-Defamation League, which offered the reward. "Cross burnings are incredibly difficult for victims to deal with."

The burning of a cross on the front lawn of a Huntington Beach home Tuesday night is being investigated as arson and a hate crime, police said. The homeowner discovered the blazing 6-foot-tall cross about 10 p.m., Huntington Police Lt. Jon Arnold said. The 46-year-old homeowner, who is Jewish, said he was in the living room when he saw a "big blaze of light" through a window. He said he rushed outside, knocked the burning cross to the ground and doused it with water from a garden hose.

The eight young men and three teenage boys said they were guilty. The judge sent them to prison. And thus came to an end an incident born out of the Deep South's dark past that has reemerged, both in this region and across the nation. Eleven of them--white males every one--had burned two gasoline-soaked wooden crosses and fired pistols and rifles into the midnight air in the center of two black neighborhoods in Junction City. "They burned it right there in front of our window.

A convicted burglar who allegedly burned a cross outside a Pomona apartment complex where several black families live was named in a felony complaint Tuesday. Jeremy Ward Garmon, 24, was charged with violating a California Penal Code section that makes it a crime to burn a religious symbol on private property "for the purpose of terrorizing the owner or occupant."

The state Supreme Court struck down Maryland's anti-cross burning law, saying it was unconstitutional because it interfered with free speech. In the unanimous opinion, Chief Judge Robert Murphy wrote: "The open and deliberate burning of religious symbols is, needless to say, odious to thoughtful members of our society. But the Constitution does not allow the unnecessary trammeling of free expression even for the noblest of purposes."

Two leaders of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of burning crosses in front of the homes of white women they believe associated with black men, the Justice Department said. A third Klansman, Eddie Pratt, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of interfering with housing rights. In U.S. District Court in Albany, Ga., he promised to cooperate in the government's case against Charles Weatherford and Franklin Dale Brown, officials said.

White supremacist Tom Metzger began serving a six-month jail term Monday after a Superior Court judge rejected a plea that he remain free pending an appeal in his cross-burning case. Judge J.D. Smith declined to release Metzger on his own recognizance. The judge said he had grown tired of Metzger using the case as a platform for his political views. "What galls this court most is Mr. Metzger continues to tell the world . . . that his conviction was based on his philosophy," Smith said.