A man who previously served time for launching racist attacks is going back to prison, this time after threatening to kill the unborn child of a pregnant Black woman in Fullerton.
Tyson Theodore Mayfield, who has the tattoos of a swastika and other hate symbols, was sentenced to 27 years to life after being convicted of making criminal threats and committing a hate crime.
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office said Mayfield approached the black woman, who was sitting on a bus bench in Fullerton on Sep. 17, 2018, and spewed racial epithets while threatening to make her “drop” her unborn baby with the clenched fists. The woman was able to get away after pepper-spraying him.
When the woman reported the incident to Fullerton police, officers were not able to locate Mayfield. But he later approached her again at a bus stop and chased her into a nearby café. Officers with the Fullerton Police Department eventually located Mayfield at the coffee shop and arrested him.
Mayfield, despite two previous convictions, was given five years in prison, which prompted the OC District Attorney’s Office to appeal, taking the case all the way to the state appellate court.
“District Attorney Todd Spitzer appeared repeatedly in front of (an Orange County Superior Court judge) to argue against a lenient sentence given Mayfield’s violent and racist criminal history,” the DA’s office said in a statement.
The woman, who was threatened by Mayfield, also asked the court to give him a longer sentence, saying she was diagnosed with PTSD after the attack.
“When Tyson was walking towards me telling me, ‘I’m going to make sure you drop your baby. It’s a promise, making sure you have this baby. I don’t like pregnant n****** like you. I have a field day of doing that,’ I felt very scared,” the victim said in her impact statement to the court. “I feel like he should be in prison for much longer. Five years is not enough.”
Prior to the 2018 attack, Mayfield was sentenced to 8 years in state prison in 2005 after making racist comments toward a woman and punched her boyfriend.
Then in 2018, Mayfield was sent to one year in prison after being convicted of hate crime for verbally assaulting and punching a Filipino and Turkish man in a Fullerton parking lot. The convict was on parole from this case when he threatened the pregnant woman.