Racist group member charged in N.Y. heist

Suspect was involved in Trumbull attack

Connecticut Post/August 20, 2004
By Daniel Tepfer

Bridgeport -- A member of the white-supremacist group White Wolves was ordered arrested Thursday for violating probation here after he was charged in New York with holding up a jewelry store.

Brian W. Staehly, 18, is charged in a warrant with violating probation. However, court officials said it is unlikely he will be brought back here until after the New York case is resolved.

Staehly, accused of a racist attack on two black teenagers in Trumbull last fall, in May was granted youthful offender status on charges of intimidation due to bias in the second degree and criminal mischief in the third degree.

He was sentenced in Superior Court to a one-year suspended sentence and two years of probation.

Police said that Staehly, of Prospect Court in West Haven, is a member of the White Wolves, a local neo-Nazi group.

The Trumbull incident took place last Sept. 20 when Staehly and several other teens, wearing neo-Nazi garb, surrounded a car with three teens outside a party at a home in Roosevelt Drive, police said.

The group yelled racial slurs at the two black teens in the car and Staehly smashed the car's rear window, police said.

On July 14, according to police in Yonkers, N.Y., Staehly held up the On The Mark Coin and Jewelry Store in that city.

Police said Staehly and another man, dressed in blue coveralls and white hard hats, went into the store carrying clipboards and said they were there to fix the broken pipes.

When a store employee suggested they might have the wrong address, police said Staehly reached over the counter and grabbed the victim in a headlock while his companion pulled out a handgun.

Staehly allegedly told the store employee, "We're sorry we had to do this, but circumstances dictated it," police said. They then led the employee to the rear of the store and ordered him to open the safe, police said.

Staehly and his accomplice emptied the safe of jewelry and three handguns, police said. Staehly then bound the victim's mouth with duct tape and tied him to a chair, police said. They fled the store.

On the way out police said Staehly taped a sign to the door that read, "Sorry we're closed."

Police said they later got a tip that Staehly was involved in the holdup, and he was identified as one of the robbers by the store employee.

Staehly was arrested two days later.