Man hurls hot coffee, beats 72-year-old in racist attacks, CA officials say
A man attacked two separate drivers “while hurling racial slurs” in “hate motivated attacks,” California prosecutors say.
Now, Robert Tackett, 54, of Irvine has been charged with several felonies in connection with the alleged attacks, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said in a July 30 news release.
Attorney information for Tackett was not immediately available.
As a man was driving at about 9:30 a.m. July 22, “he noticed a man having a negative interaction with the driver of a garbage truck” and started recording video, prosecutors said.
The man, later identified as Tackett, began to follow the driver in his work van, prosecutors said.
While yelling racial slurs, Tackett pulled beside the driver “and tried to run him off the road,” prosecutors said.
Tackett tried to hit the driver’s vehicle, causing him to slam on his brakes twice, prosecutors said.
When Tackett’s attempts to hit the other driver failed, he hurled “a hot cup of coffee into the” man’s vehicle, prosecutors said.
The coffee “landed on the victim’s face, hands, and on the interior of his car,” Irvine Police said in a news release.
The driver captured video of a majority of the incident, which a family member shared on social media, police said.
As the video began to make rounds on social media, it caught the attention of police, who began investigating, prosecutors said.
Then, another driver contacted Irvine police about a separate incident involving Tackett, which was also recorded, prosecutors said.
In that incident, prosecutors said Tackett left his work van while stopped at a red light in Westminster.
Tackett is accused of then “punching a 72-year-old driver repeatedly through the open window” of his truck while yelling profanities and racial slurs, prosecutors said.
As Tackett attacked the man, he tried to shield himself, prosecutors said.
Tackett was identified as the man from the videos and arrested July 24, prosecutors said.
He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon other than a firearm, violation of civil rights, assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury and inflicting injury on an elder adult,
“Hate is a venom that poisons everything – and everyone – it touches,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a release. “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.”
If convicted on all counts, prosecutors said Tackett faces a maximum eight year prison sentence.
Tackett is being held on $500,000 bail, prosecutors said.
This story was originally published July 31, 2025 at 12:36 PM with the headline "Man hurls hot coffee, beats 72-year-old in racist attacks, CA officials say."
