UPDATE, APRIL 10, 5:21 P.M.: Orange County KKK leader William Ernest Hagen punched a homeless man on April 14, 2015, and threatened to cut his throat with a box cutter, according to Orange County Superior Court documents.
The attack happened outside Capri Bar and Grill in Orange, where Hagen had complained about the transient’s belongings being in a cart near a large trash bin. An Orange police officer testified during the trial that besides the assault, Hagen threatened to sic the Klan on the homeless gentleman. Hagen was found guilty by a jury of assault with a deadly weapon and criminal threats with a sentencing enhancement for the personal use of a deadly weapon, reports the Orange County District Attorney’s office. Hagen was taken into custody after the verdict was read and is due back at West Justice Center in Westminster for sentencing on June 16. The court documents indicate Hagen was convicted in Orange County Superior Court in December 1988 for assault with a deadly weapon, robbery and attempted robbery, with the latter count deemed a “serious felony.”
ORIGINAL POST, APRIL 10, 5:35 A.M.: Orange County’s Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon, who was arrested in December for allegedly stabbing and beating a man at a North Carolina Klan gathering, was popped Friday for assault with a deadly weapon in Westminster Orange in 2015, according to a source.
Officials with the Westminster Police Department could not be reached for confirmation at press time, but online records indicate 51-year-old William Ernest Hagen was being held without bail in Orange County Jail as of Sunday night.
The sheriff department’s jail inmate database indicates Hagen gave “manager” as his occupation and that he has a court date scheduled June 16.
Also known as “Billy Quigg” and “William Quigg,” Hagen was also arrested Dec. 3 at the Yanceyville, North Carolina, home of Christopher Eugene Barker, the founder of the local Ku Klux Klan who was also taken into custody by Caswell County sheriff’s deputies.
Court documents in North Carolina indicated that Hagen got into an altercation with Richard Dillon, who’d come from Indiana to attend a “National Klanvocation” event that would include a victory parade for then-president-elect Donald Trump. Dillon had previously posted criticism of Hagen online over lax security at a February 2016 KKK event in Anaheim, where counter-protesters beat up klansmen.
Hagen, of Orange, is accused of plunging a knife that had been strapped to his ankle into the chest of Dillon, who fell to the ground, where Barker allegedly roughed up the victim some more.
It was Hagen, the California Grand Dragon West Coast King Kleagle of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who was roughed up by counter-protesters during the Klan rally in Anaheim, where Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, intervened to save the klukker from further harm.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
This is Will Quigg who is talked about in this article. This article is filled with lies and deceit. You are very lucky the time restraints are over or I would sue you for defamation of character.