An Irvine man was charged with hate crimes against Latino men after he was videotaped allegedly hurling racial slurs and throwing hot coffee on one man and punching an elderly man.
Robert Tackett, a 54-year-old Irvine resident, was charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon other than a firearm, a felony count of violation of civil rights, a felony count of assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury and a felony count of inflicting injury on an elder adult, according to an Orange County District Attorney’s Office news release.
If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of eight years in state prison, officials said. He is being held on $500,000 bail at the Orange County Jail.
According to the release, Tackett had a “negative interaction with the driver of a garbage truck” and the incident was filmed by another driver. Tackett allegedly followed the driver who filmed him, tried to run him off the road and slam into his vehicle, and yelled “anti-Hispanic racial slurs.”
Tackett allegedly tried twice to crash into the driver’s vehicle and threw a hot cup of coffee onto the car and driver, authorities said. The driver didn’t call police but was identified after he posted the video on social media.
In a video obtained by KTLA5, a man later identified as Tackett was seen driving a white work van and swerving into the lane of the driver, who was taking the video.
In a second incident around 5:30 p.m. on the same day, Tackett is accused of getting out of his van after stopping at a stoplight in Westminster and punching a 72-year-old driver through the window of his pickup truck “while yelling profanity and anti-Hispanic slurs,” authorities said.
Another driver recorded the alleged attack and called the Irvine Police Department after seeing the video of the first attack on social media, officials said.
Tackett was arrested by California Highway Patrol on July 24 in Mammoth, officials said.
“Hate is a venom that poisons everything — and everyone — it touches. An attack motivated by hate is not an attack on just a single individual; it is an attack on the very fabric of our society and our community as a whole,” said Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer in the release. .
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