`CRASH PAD FOR THUGS' RAIDED, THREE ARRESTED.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Daily News Staff Writer

Sheriff's deputies said Wednesday they seized firearms, a Nazi flag and white-supremacist literature and arrested two men and a woman in a raid on a house that a detective called ``a crash pad for thugs.''

Deputies said the two men are affiliated with a Latino gang from Los Angeles, but they were sharing a house with an associate of the notorious Nazi Low Riders gang, and one of them was pictured in a photograph with a reputed Nazi Low Rider arrested in last week's hammer attack on an African-American Wal-Mart employee.

``The connection with the Nazi Low Riders is the drug trade and the drug trade only,'' said Detective Brian Schoonmaker during a Lancaster Sheriff's Station news conference at which officials showed off guns, cell phones, the imitation World War II Nazi flag and Aryan Nations literature. ``I don't believe they share any ideology.''

Arrested Wednesday morning were Eugene Contreras, 23, of Lancaster; Benny Hurtado, 21, of Lancaster, and Maria Vasquez-Gutierrez, 22, of Lancaster. Deputies said the white supremacist material belonged to a 17-year-old resident of the house who had been arrested Sunday when authorities stopped a vehicle and found him with a pistol.

Deputies said they learned that Contreras was at the house and obtained a search warrant because he was being sought for violation of parole after a conviction for assault with a deadly weapon.

Contreras was booked on suspicion of being an ex-convict in possession of a firearm and for a parole violation, deputies said. Hurtado was booked on suspicion of grand theft of a .22 pistol allegedly stolen from an acquaintance. Vasquez-Gutierrez was booked on suspicion of possessing drug paraphernalia.

At the press conference, deputies laid out material seized from their home: two bolt-action hunting rifles, four handguns, a cross-bow, six cellular telephones and the white-supremacist material, including a skateboard decorated with a swastika.

The white-supremacist material came from the room of the 17-year-old who lived in the house in the 45400 block of Rodin Avenue with Hurtado, Contreras, Vasquez-Gutierrez and several other people, deputies said.

``It was more or less a crash pad for thugs,'' Schoonmaker said of the house.

Deputies said they were still checking to see if the firearms or cell phones had been stolen. The .22 pistol belonged to a woman who didn't know it was missing from the drawer where she kept it until deputies called, officials said.

Also found in the house, deputies said, was a photograph of Contreras with Christopher Crawford, 25, of Lancaster, a reputed Nazi Low Rider member arrested March 23 with Shaun Broderick, 19, of Newhall in an attack on a young African-American man who struck up a conversation with Broderick's girlfriend.

The Nazi Low Riders organization started in state prisons and California Youth Authority facilities and surfaced in Orange County in the early 1990s, according to sheriff's officials and an Anti-Defamation League staffer who tracks extremist groups.

The group has 50 to 60 members and associates in the Antelope Valley, officials estimated.

Deputy Brad Foss said gang investigators regard the group as a street gang with a white-supremacist philosophy.

``They're committing crimes just like any other gang out here,'' Foss said.

Despite their white-supremacist beliefs, Foss said, the Nazi Low Riders may cooperate with Latino gangs in methamphetamine traffic.

The gang, now spread though much of Southern California and the Central Valley, aims to the gang's primary goal is to corner methamphetamine production and marketing in California, according to the ADL staffer, who asked not to be identified by name.

In Antelope Valley, the group surfaced in 1996 with a highly publicized attack on two African-American teen-agers, cousins, who were jumped by three white youths with shaved heads. The trio drove up in a car as the cousins walked down the street, authorities said.

The oldest of the trio admitted to being a member of the Nazi Low Riders and was sentenced to prison for that attack and an earlier baseball attack on an African-American man coming out of a video store.

In 1997, two young men who prosecutors said were trying to gain membership were charged in the beating death of an African-American transient in Lancaster two years earlier, and they are still awaiting trial.

The two were already serving time for racially motivated attacks when they, along with another young man and a young woman, were charged with murder.

Last month, two ex-convicts and a young woman arrested in connection with a series of home-invasion robberies were identified as Nazi Low Riders, authorities said. Also arrested was a 17-year-old boy described as an associate of the gang.

Guns were stolen in two of the three robberies from homes of white people.

One of the three had been sentenced in 1996 for a cross burning that started a brush fire at a Littlerock Recreation Area campground. After the fire got out of control, the group abandoned the campsite, and authorities said that, along with camping gear and personal belongings, including identification, they found a piece of paper scrawled with a swastika and ``Heil Hitler.''

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PHOTO (Color in AV Edition only) (Ran in AV and SAC Editions only) Deputy Brad Foss talks about guns seized in a raid on a Lancaster home.

Charles F. Bostwick/Daily News