A 41-year-old man previously convicted of a hate crime in Brea was charged Tuesday with attacking a woman at a Panda Express restaurant in La Habra.
Erik Lee Overturf was charged with a felony hate crime, a hate crime with a previous conviction for one and vandalism, all felonies, as well as misdemeanor assault and battery. He is accused in the attack that occurred June 2 and with vandalism committed July 10, according to the criminal complaint.
Further details of the attack were not immediately available. Police and prosecutors did not immediately respond to a request for more information.
Overturf pleaded guilty in January 2018 to insulting a gym manager with repeated racial slurs and spitting on a Brea police officer who arrested him. He accepted a plea deal from an Orange County Superior Court judge that reduced a felony hate crime to a misdemeanor over the objections of prosecutors.
Overturf got into a conflict about 5:30 p.m. Jan. 12, 2018, with the manager of a gym in Brea, where he had his membership revoked because of “multiple instances of disruptive behavior,” prosecutors said in 2018.
He insulted the manager, who is Latino, with racial slurs and tried to punch the victim, and also threw a scanner and pushed a computer monitor off the front desk, prosecutors said.
He spit on the officer who arrested him while he was in the back seat of a police car.
Overturf pleaded guilty in February 2021 to a felony count of false imprisonment and a misdemeanor count of assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury for another attack in La Habra, according to court records.
According to a restraining order filed against Overturf in 2019, he was asked to slop slamming weights while working out at a La Habra gym. When the victim told him to stop he responded with an expletive and then he “aggressively moved towards me, grabbed my neck and lifted me up and slammed me against a weight machine,” she said in her restraining order request.
“I screamed, and gym members confronted him,” she added. “He let go of my neck and was escorted outside, where he yelled he hated `(expletive) Mexicans.”’
A neighbor of his in August 2024 sought a restraining order against him as well. That was approved through September 2029.
The neighbor said he was opening his garage to go somewhere when he and his daughter saw Overturf shouting “while walking back and forth in front of my driveway on the street.”
The neighbor dialed 911 as Overturf allegedly called him a “Chinese bitch” and threatened him, according to the restraining order.
The neighbor also said Overturf “threw a (five pound) weight” through his kitchen window about 3 a.m. Jan. 11, 2018.