Police tape blocks off the crime scene outside a church where a man shot dead four people, including three of his children, before turning the gun on himself, February 28, 2022 in Sacramento, California. A father shot dead three of his own children on February 28 before turning the gun on himself in a US church, police said. A fifth person also died in the shooting in Sacramento, California, though it was not clear if that person was related to what police said was a domestic incident. (Photo by Andri Tambunan / AFP) (Photo by ANDRI TAMBUNAN/AFP via Getty Images)
San Diego, California – A San Diego judge on Friday sentenced Troy Andrew Scholder, a senior member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, to 21 years to life in state prison for his role in what prosecutors described as a racially motivated attack on three young Black men in Ocean Beach last summer.
Scholder, 44, was convicted earlier this year of attempted murder, assault, and committing a hate crime stemming from the June 6, 2023, incident in which prosecutors said a group of Hells Angels members chased and beat the victims after one of them briefly spoke to a woman associated with the gang. The beating culminated in Scholder stabbing one of the victims in the chest while he lay on the ground, leaving him with a fractured sternum, a pierced lung, and a severed artery.
According to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, Scholder—described as a longtime leader of a local Hells Angels chapter—was one of 17 people indicted by a grand jury for various roles in the attack. The victims, aged 19, 20, and 21, had been walking along Newport Avenue when they were confronted, chased, and then violently assaulted by the group. Witnesses and victims reported the attackers shouted racial slurs and told them they did not belong in the neighborhood.
“This wasn’t a bar fight. It was a lynch mob,” said Deputy District Attorney Miriam Hemming during sentencing, emphasizing that Scholder led the group in an attack motivated by race and fueled by white supremacist ideology. Hemming pointed to Scholder’s known affiliations, tattoos, and previous use of racial slurs as further evidence of his motivations.
Defense attorney Marc Kohnen argued the sentence was excessive and that the hate crime enhancement was not supported by direct evidence that Scholder himself used racial slurs during the incident. He also pointed to a gap in criminal activity between a 2007 conviction—also gang-related—and the 2023 stabbing.
But prosecutors said Scholder’s criminal history showed a pattern of violence and bigotry. In 2003, Scholder was convicted of a misdemeanor hate crime after using racial slurs and invoking violent threats toward a Black man in a Pacific Beach bar, then referencing Nazi ideology to the arresting officer.
After the Ocean Beach stabbing, Scholder was taken from the scene to the Hells Angels clubhouse in El Cajon by fellow gang members. Authorities arrested him nearly three months later.
