Police in North Carolina said Tuesday they were investigating the fatal shooting of a gay community college worker as a possible hate crime.
The shooting victim, 44-year-old campus print shop director Ron Lane, was gunned down by former student Kenneth Morgan Stancil III on Monday morning, police said. Lane dismissed Stancil from the print shop’s work-study program in March because he had too many absences.
Police have not released a motive in the shooting and said the men’s relationship was purely a supervisor-student one.
Lane’s supervisor at the college said Lane was gay, but police refused to say why a hate crime was being investigated.
An expert who tracks hate groups said Stancil’s facial tattoo with the number “88” was a clear indication of a neo-Nazi, who have been accused of attacking gays. However, police have not said whether Stancil held white supremacist beliefs.
Fled on motorcycle
Police say the 20-year-old Stancil entered the Wayne Community College print shop where he used to work and fired once with a pistol-grip shotgun, killing Lane, his former supervisor, just as Lane was arriving for work.
Kenneth Morgan Stancil III was arrested on a Florida beach after a massive manhunt. (Volusia County Department of Corrections/Associated Press)
The shooting sparked a campus-wide lockdown as police stormed the building searching for Stancil, who immediately fled on a motorcycle. The manhunt lasted for nearly a day and ended with Stancil’s arrest on a Florida beach.
An arrest photo of Stancil released by Florida authorities show him with the number “88” on his left cheek, a number used by racist extremists, said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor and director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. Because “H” is the eighth letter of the alphabet, 88 equates to HH or “Heil Hitler,” Levin said.
Neo-Nazis have a long and violent antipathy toward gays, said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States.
Brent Hood, coordinator of education support technology at the college, was Lane’s supervisor for the past three years. He said he didn’t think Lane was killed because he was gay.
“I guess from my point of view, he [Stancil] was angry over getting dismissed from his duties,” Hood told The Associated Press. “If he had other reasons or motives, it was not clear when he worked here. He worked very well with Ron; he worked very well with my other employees.”
Meanwhile, students returned to class at the college Tuesday.
