The State - News from Nov. 1, 1988

A Westminster man pleaded innocent in Santa Ana federal court to charges that he burned a cross on the front lawn of a neighboring black family last summer. Gary A. Skillman, 23, was arrested Saturday night, three months after Alvin T. Heisser and his family awoke to find a cross on fire in their front yard. Skillman, on probation from a drug conviction, lives a block away from the Heisser family. A federal grand jury indicted Skillman last Tuesday on three charges--two involving civil rights violations and one involving use of fire in a felony--and a warrant was issued for his arrest.