FOND DU LAC, WI (WTAQ) – We’re learning more about Steven Snyder, the man who died along with a state trooper in a shootout in Fond du Lac that ended a crime spree on Tuesday.
Two Milwaukee TV stations said Snyder is 38-years-old, from Macomb Township Michigan in suburban Detroit.
WITI said Snyder was a master cement mason, and ran his own business in eastern Michigan. That station and WISN-TV learned that Snyder was part of a group of skinheads that got into a bloody brawl with a group of minorities in Fond du Lac in 1996.
Lucas Soto told WISN he remembered 30 skinheads following him down a street when he was 13 — and they targeted him because there were blacks and Hispanics in his home. The group was said to be scuffling with neighbors before police arrived.
WITI said many people ran off — but police caught Snyder wearing several “white power” tattoos and carrying cards promoting the white supremacist group “National Alliance.”
Online court records confirm that Snyder was convicted of misdemeanor disorderly conduct in ’96, and had no other criminal record in Wisconsin. The TV reports said Snyder spent 50 days in jail for that conviction.
Authorities continue to investigate Tuesday’s crime spree, in which Snyder allegedly robbed a bank in Wausaukee, and killed a man nearby in an apparent car-jacking. He may have also robbed a Fond du Lac bank before getting into a shootout in which he and State Trooper Trevor Casper died.
(Story courtesy of Wheeler News Service)
