Police examine
possible hate crime
Men with shaved heads spread
white powder in mostly black area
Dallas Morning News
Sunday, February 21, 1993
By Tony Hartzel
Staff Writer of the Dallas Morning News
Two groups of young white men
with shaved heads ran through an Old East Dallas
apartment complex Saturday spreading a white powder
in what police are investigation as a possible hare
crime.
The men threw the powder on the
ground and playground equipment at the Roseland Homes
apartments in the 2100 block of North Washington
before fleeing, police said.
One of the men gave two
children necklaces of colored beads, and another man
carried what appeared to be a small, shrunken head,
officer Larry Dyer said. Witnesses told police that
some of the men chanted unintelligibly and did not
respond to residents' questions.
Police have sent samples of the
powder to a lab for testing and expect results in
three weeks. Even if the powder is not harmful, the
incident could be filed as a hate crime, Detective
Sandra Ortega DeKing said.
"Either way, it probably
would be a hate crime because the white males
did this in Roseland Homes,
which is predominantly black," she said.
Apartment resident Aretha
Franklin , 25, said the powder was disturbing.
"I want to know what the
substance was because kids play in the
playground," she said.
Four of the men ran through the
apartment playground Saturday morning and returned in
the afternoon with four to six other men, police
said. They carried the powder in plastic-covered
bags.
During the incident at about
2:30 p.m., witnesses told police, the men began
spreading the powder at the J.W. Ray Elementary
School playground across the street. One man made an
"X" on the ground with the white powder.
They were last seen getting
into a yellow van with the word Remco written on the
side, police were told.