DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Police are investigating the fatal shooting of a gay community college worker as a hate crime, while the man charged in the killing told a judge Tuesday there was ‘‘one less child molester’’ after the slaying of his former supervisor.
Nothing in police records substantiated the allegations Kenneth Morgan Stancil III made at his bond hearing, and a judge warned him he had the right to remain silent.
Stancil, 20, a former student at Wayne Community College in Goldsboro, N.C., is accused of killing Ron Lane, his former work-study supervisor, who had dismissed him from the school print shop’s program in March after too many absences.
Police said Lane, 44, was gunned down Monday morning soon after he reported for work. They allege that Stancil entered the campus print shop where he used to work and fired once with a pistol-grip shotgun. The shooting sparked a campus lockdown and police stormed the building looking for Stancil, who fled on a motorcycle. The search ended with his arrest on a Florida beach early Tuesday.
Police have not released a motive in the shooting, and said the men’s relationship was one of supervisor and student.
Specialists who track hate groups said Stancil’s facial tattoo with the number ‘‘88’’ was a a neo-Nazi symbol; however, police have not said whether they believe Stancil held white supremacist beliefs.
After the shooting, police found Stancil’s motorcycle abandoned along Interstate 95 80 miles south of Goldsboro.
Police figured Stancil was headed south and alerted law enforcement. After releasing a photo of him with the tattoo on his face, police said, people reported several sightings of him. Stancil had gotten most of the tattoo as recently as Saturday.
An arrest photo showed Stancil 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.
‘‘Those who get facial tattoos tend to be the uppermost antisocial part of the scale,’’ he said.
Neo-Nazis have a long and violent antipathy toward gays, said Mark Potok, with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States.
Early Tuesday, more than 500 miles from the school, a patrol officer in Daytona Beach found Stancil sleeping on a beach, authorities said. Police don’t know how he got there. While armed with a knife, Stancil was apprehended without incident, authorities said.
Police have not found the 12-gauge shotgun they believe was used to kill Lane.
Goldsboro police and the Wayne County district attorney’s office will work to have Stancil extradited to North Carolina to face a murder charge.
At his bond hearing in Daytona Beach, Stancil told the judge there is now ‘‘one less child molester.’’ He said a close relative had been molested.
A clerk with the Wayne County sheriff’s office said there were no records of complaints by Stancil or relatives accusing Lane of molestation.
Stancil has no prior criminal record, police said.