Family defends man accused of racial slurs, firing gun
Stanton pleads not guilty in neighborhood dispute
Family members of a Santa Fe man who was arraigned on assault charges that have been classified as hate crimes say he didn’t make a Nazi salute or use racial slurs during a neighborhood dispute, didn’t have a real firearm during the incident and police never got his side of the story before arresting him.
Zachary Stanton, 40, was arrested in August after his neighbors on a residential block near Frenchy’s Field Park reported to police that he was threatening to killing them and had fired shots.
The neighbors also accused Stanton of “saluting like a Nazi” and making racist comments.
Stanton’s uncle Royal Prentice and two other family members who attended his arraignment Thursday in a state District Court in Santa Fe said the alleged victims in the case were actually the aggressors and that Stanton does have anger issues but is not racist.
The gun he is accused of firing at neighbors, they added, wasn’t real.
That assertion was backed up by police in a search warrant report, which listed the weapon, recovered later from Stanton’s home, as an air pistol.
A Santa Fe grand jury indicted Stanton earlier this month on three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, charges that are enhanced with a hate crime designation, and two counts of tampering with evidence. If he is found guilty on all five charges, Stanton could face a maximum of 10½ years in prison, including an extra year for each count designated a hate crime.
When officers arrived at the scene, Stanton was by turns hostile and docile, according to a Santa Fe Police Department report.
He shouted at the officers and spit on one, the report said, but later thanked one officer for treating him with respect.
Prentice provided a statement that he said had been written by Stanton, giving his account of the incident: On the day of the altercation, the statement said, Stanton went out on his porch to perform a stretching routine that he’d done for years to ease his back pain. That was when neighbors began taunting Stanton from the street, Prentice said.
“I noticed a few cars full of people,” Stanton wrote in his statement. “They got out of their cars and began making fun of my stretches. The cars were parked down and across the street from my house. When they noticed me watching they began calling me ‘A Racist.’ The Group said, ‘I was Hailing Hitler,’ then started walking toward my house. One had a kitchen knife and the Gang was threatening to ‘Kill Me’ vocally. I went into my house and grabbed my Pellet Gun in hopes of scaring the Gang away. Because I was in Fear of My Life.”
When the people continued coming toward him, he wrote, he went inside his home for awhile then came out again, only to be confronted by police officers who pointed a gun in his face and ordered him to get on the ground.
The officers beat him, he said in the statement, and tried to question him without a lawyer during his arrest.
Stanton wrote that the “Black Cop” was the only one with his lapel camera on during the incident and “the Mexican Cop” was punching him in the head and standing on hands, smashing them against the handcuffs and the sidewalk.
Stanton remains in jail with no opportunity to post bond following a previous court hearing in which a judge ruled he was too dangerous to be released.
His defense attorney was not present at his arraignment Thursday, but another attorney entered a not guilty plea on Stanton’s behalf and told his family members they could talk to his regular attorney about filing a motion asking a judge to reconsider the no-bond detention.
After the hearing, Stanton’s family members told they were distressed that media accounts of the incident had portrayed Stanton as racist — a claim they called ridiculous.
“Some people have accused Zachary of certain things, and the police arrived, and they had their experience and they developed charges, and that’s all anybody knows up until this point,” Prentice said.
“And what we know is, we know this individual,” he continued. “This is our family member. He’s been a a very gentle soul throughout his life, a very responsible individual who has had some really severe injuries.”
A doctor told Stanton in jail that his spine may have been further injured during his arrest, Prentice said, and that he could be at risk for paralysis. The doctor said he needs X-rays and an MRI — imaging tests that the jail does not have the capacity to conduct.
“He has got a lot of health issues,” Prentice said of Stanton, “and he can have anger issues. Being in pain a lot sometimes has that result.”