Hate watchdog group says man arrested in Lynnwood tavern melee linked to white-supremacist group

Among the nine people arrested after a melee early Saturday in which a black disc jockey at a Lynnwood bar was assaulted is a 34-year-old man the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) says is associated with some of the nation’s “oldest and most violent racist skinhead groups.”

Travis David Condor was booked in the Snohomish County Jail at 1:31 a.m., shortly after the fight. He and others arrested are being held for investigation of malicious harassment, assault, malicious mischief and DUI. In Washington, a hate crime comes under the malicious-harassment state statute.

The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office says racial slurs were used during the attack on the DJ.

Condor told authorities he was from Philadelphia. His age and place of residence fit the description of the man the SPLC identified in a media alert.

Lt. Jeff Brand, of the Sheriff’s Office, said one of the people arrested is from Bothell; the rest are from out of state. All are white, Brand said.

On Sunday afternoon, patrons and the bar help at the Rec Room Bar & Grill, located in a strip mall at 149th and Highway 99, were shocked when shown the release from the SPLC about Condor.

A former Army specialist who had served in Iraq, Condor pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault to a 2010 beating – with a baseball bat and other objects – of a homeless man in Cincinnati. Condor was among four men, including another soldier, charged in the attack.

He’s also head of American Defense Records, which advertises itself as a “patriotic record label.” Titles of records it carries include “Liberals Can Die,” “American Skinheads … Armed With The Truth!” and “Strength Thru Hate.”

The SPLC said Condor was seen with other supremacists at the August 2017 white nationalists rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

On Sunday, among those visiting the Rec Room was the DJ who was attacked Saturday.

“What the …,” he said, when reading the SPLC release.

He has asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

The DJ said that at one point in the brawl, one of the men told him, “We will find you, and we will kill you.”

The DJ had been playing tunes ranging from rhythm and blues to Top 40, and even Phil Collins, he said, when someone in the group told him to play “hard stuff,” meaning heavy metal.

The DJ said fine, and he showed the man he had cued Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath on his Mac computer holding 9,000 tunes. That wasn’t fast enough for the man, the DJ said.

“What, they couldn’t wait a minute and a half, two minutes? That’s all they had to wait to get to their music?” the DJ said. “For that they beat my ass, and called me a (N-word)?”

The DJ said he hurt from “head to toe” from the assault, but he did not go to a hospital. He said that the screen on his computer was shattered by one of the men, who also had started taking off his pants and dancing in his underwear.

The Rec Room gets generally good reviews in Yelp as “chill.”

Among those sipping a can of Bud Light at the bar Sunday was a man who has that particular seat reserved for his nickname, Spicoli, the Sean Penn character in the 1982 movie, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

In real life, he said, he installs phones.

“This is a very friendly bar,” he said. “Everybody knows each other. It’s very diverse.”

He also didn’t want his actual name used, and he said he hoped this whole thing would go away.

It’s hard to figure out why the group of up to 20 people, many from out of state, came to the bar Saturday — or even knew about it.

It doesn’t face Highway 99, but it is tucked in the back of the strip mall, which is also home to Korean, Thai and Middle Eastern restaurants, as well as the African Super Mart.

The SPLC said white supremacists typically gather on Dec. 8 on Whidbey Island to commemorate the death of Robert Jay Mathews, who died in a shootout with FBI agents at his cabin there on that day in 1984. Mathews was the founder of The Order, a neo-Nazi “silent brotherhood.”

When Alfred Condor, of Rayland, Ohio, was contacted about his son’s white-supremacist beliefs, he said, “We never discuss that sort of thing.”

He said he did remember his son once “getting into trouble, I’m not really sure, fighting with some homeless guy, I think.”