Two Ku Klux Klan leaders were arrested over the weekend in connection with stabbing a fellow Klansman hours before the hate group rallied in North Carolina on Saturday in celebration of Donald Trump being elected president.
Richard Dillon, 47, told police that he was stabbed multiple times Saturday morning when he got into a fight with two other men while attending a KKK meeting being held at a member’s home in Yanceyville, about 70 miles north of Raleigh.
After transporting Mr. Dillon to a local hospital, the Caswell County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant at the meeting place and arrested Christopher Eugene Barker, the 37-year-old “Imperial Wizard” of a regionally headquartered Klan group called the Loyal White Knights.
A second suspect, the state leader of the group’s California faction, “Grand Dragon” William Hagen, was also arrested in connection with the stabbing after being apprehended during a traffic stop later Saturday, said Caswell County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Captain Frank Rose.
Mr. Hagen, also known as “William Quigg,” had reportedly traveled from the West Coast in order to participate in a pro-Trump “victory parade” that was slated to take place in the region Saturday, according to Carla Hill, an investigative researcher with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
The Loyal White Knights announced shortly after Mr. Trump’s election that it would be holding a rally in celebration on Dec. 3 at an undetermined location within the Tar Heel State. The notice initially appeared above an image of the president-elect and the phrase “Trump = Trump’s Race United My People,” but disappeared after word of the group’s rally began to spread last month.
The group later said it would gather rally in in its home base of Pelham near the Virginia border, but never showed. Instead police say the group briefly led a caravan of about 20 vehicles through the nearby town of Roxboro on Saturday afternoon while law enforcement blocked traffic so the group could “leave the city as fast as possible,” a local CBS News affiliate reported.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Ms. Hill described Mr. Dillon, the stabbing victim, as a known Klan member from Indiana. Police said Mr. Dillon was treated and released from an area hospital for injuries not considered life-threatening.
Mr. Hagen has been charged with one count of felony assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, and was initially being held on $350,000 bond. Mr. Barker was charged with one count felony aiding and abetting the assault, and was held for a $200,000 bond.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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