A member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang was sentenced Friday to 21 years to life in state prison for stabbing a young Black man in the chest in what prosecutors described as a racially motivated attack on the victim and two other Black men in Ocean Beach.
Troy Andrew Scholder, 44, described by the District Attorney’s Office as a longtime leader of an active San Diego County Hells Angels chapter, was one of 17 people indicted by a grand jury for various roles in the June 6, 2023, attack.
A San Diego Superior Court jury convicted him earlier this year of attempted murder, assault and a hate crime allegation.
Prosecutors said the victims — ages 19, 20 and 21 — were chased by the defendants on Newport Avenue after one of them apparently spoke to another Hells Angels member’s girlfriend.
One of the victims fled, but the other two were severely beaten by numerous defendants, who hurled racial slurs and told the victims they didn’t belong in that neighborhood.
While one of the beaten victims was on the ground, Scholder pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the chest. Deputy District Attorney Miriam Hemming said the knife fractured the victim’s sternum, pierced his lung and severed an artery, nearly causing him to bleed out.
Scholder’s prison sentence was doubled due to a prior strike conviction in which Scholder pleaded guilty to robbing a former Hells Angels member who had sought to leave the gang.
Defense attorney Marc Kohnen argued against imposing the strike conviction because he said Scholder had been living crime-free between that incident — which occurred in 2007 — and the Ocean Beach incident.
Kohnen also argued that despite jurors finding the hate crime allegation true, there wasn’t evidence that Scholder’s actions were hate-motivated or that Scholder used any racial slurs during the incident.
Hemming argued that during the crime, Scholder was “leading a pack of men” who were shouting racial slurs and that he had long associated with co-defendants who espoused White supremacist views. She also said Scholder had White supremacist tattoos and had used racial slurs on prior occasions.
One of those incidents led to a misdemeanor conviction in 2003, which included a hate crime allegation, Hemming said. In that incident, the prosecutor said Scholder got into a fight with a Black man at a Pacific Beach bar after the victim asked Scholder to stop smoking a cigarette next to him.
When police came to arrest Scholder, he called the victim a racial epithet and made other racist remarks, according to Hemming.
In the Ocean Beach incident, the prosecutor said the victims were “just walking down the street” before they were attacked. She said one witness described the victims being “beaten within an inch of their lives.”
After the stabbing, other co-defendants spirited Scholder from the crime scene to the gang’s clubhouse in El Cajon, prosecutors said. Scholder and his co-defendants were arrested nearly three months later.
