Local News in Brief : 6 Months in Racial Attack

In what a prosecutor called a warning to white supremacist groups, an Oregon transient was sentenced Tuesday to six months in jail for spraying a group of Latinos with a fire extinguisher from a passing car in the San Fernando Valley while yelling, “White power.”

Robert Rufus Renney, 26, suspected of being a member of the Skinheads, a neo-Nazi gang, pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor count of assault with a deadly weapon and to violating probation on an earlier conviction for a racially motivated crime.

Van Nuys Municipal Court Judge Robert Swasey also sentenced Renney to three years’ probation and ordered him not to engage in violence or place racist stickers or hate slogans on public or private property.

The assault charge stems from a Nov. 11 attack in which a car swerved into a group of Latinos, forcing them to scatter. Renney, a passenger in the car, then sprayed the group with the fire extinguisher while yelling racist slogans, Los Angeles police said.

Police officers in a patrol car witnessed the incident and arrested Renney and two others in the car. Charges are pending against the car’s driver and no charges were filed against a second passenger, a juvenile.