An Orange County skinhead with a history of violent hate crimes was convicted Monday of criminal threats and a hate crime after he chased an 8-month pregnant Black woman from a Fullerton bus stop, threatening to kill her unborn child while spewing racial slurs, according to the Orange County District Attorney's Office. The self-identified skinhead Tyson Theodore Mayfield, now faces a maximum sentence of 38 years to life in prison, a significant increase from an earlier five-year term that was appealed by Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer as too lenient considering Mayfield's egregious past.
Mayfield, who bears swastika and SS lightning bolt tattoos indicative of his white supremacist affiliations, was originally sentenced to five years in state prison in 2019 after a decision by Orange County Superior Court Judge Roger B. Robbins to dismiss a prior strike conviction was eventually deemed an abuse of discretion by the California Fourth District Court of Appeal which resulted in the invalidation of that sentence returning the case for prosecution, now he was charged again with felony counts of hate crime criminal threats with present ability to commit violent injury, criminal threats, and petty theft on top of his previous convictions of assault with a deadly weapon in 2005 and mayhem in 2008, as communicated by the District Attorney's press release.
Following the harrowing encounter that took place on Sept. 17, 2018, Jane Doe, the name given to the victim to protect her identity, expressed her trauma and fear in a victim impact statement, describing the threat to her unborn child and herself as Tyson Mayfield approached her at the bus stop, the emotional toll on her was compounded by her previous PTSD diagnosis, echoing her concern, District Attorney Todd Spitzer criticized the initial light sentence, stressing Mayfield's dangerousness and systematic racism, "He is a dangerous person. There is just no question he is a racist," said Spitzer, underscoring the need to better protect society from individuals like Mayfield.
Mayfield's history of hate crimes includes a 2017 assault against a man of Filipino and Turkish descent and a 2005 attack during which he attacked a couple after they refused to give him change while using racial slurs—this pattern underscored by Spitzer and the prosecution in their push for a harsher sentence, and community groups like the Christ Our Redeemer Church in Irvine, NAACP, OC Human Relations Commission, and Anti-Defamation League showed up in court to support the victim, demonstrating a collective stand against hate-based violence in the community before Mayfield's sentencing scheduled on August 29, 2025, Deputy District Attorney Gerard Gully of Special Prosecutions will be prosecuting this latest case.
