Fairfax man charged with hate crime following alleged assault at Chesterfield park

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — A Fairfax County man is facing charges for allegedly assaulting a woman at a Chesterfield County Park.

According to the Chesterfield County Police Department, 43-year-old Horace Stephenson III of Fairfax was arrested and charged with strangulation, robbery, illegal use of tear gas or other gases, assault and battery, hate crime and obstruction from summoning 911 on Wednesday, May 8.

Stephenson’s arrest comes after a woman said she was attacked while walking her dogs on the Fort Darling Trail at Richmond National Battlefield Park on Sunday, April 28.

According to police, the woman was approached by a man who tried to speak to her, but when she did not respond, he became angry and began assaulting her. When the victim screamed for help, the suspect fled.

“Her phone was taken after kind of a struggle between the two of them, and the male subject left the area,” said Sergeant Winford Lewis with the Special Victims Unit of the Chesterfield Police Department.

Lewis explained that Stephenson is facing a hate crime charge because of what he allegedly said to the victim.

“There [were] some statements made by the subject that we learned from the victim that indicated that the attack was predicated partially on the fact that she was a woman,” Lewis said. “There were some comments made specifically about her being a woman and things escalated from there.”

Lewis also added that the tear gas charge was because they believe Stephenson allegedly took the victim’s pepper spray and used it against her.

Chesterfield Police investigators were able to track Stephenson to Howard County, Maryland and worked with local law enforcement to apprehend him. Stephenson remains in custody in Maryland, pending extradition to Chesterfield County.

“The detective that was assigned primarily to the incident was able to identify the suspect, locate him and work with law enforcement in Howard County, Maryland, where he was located and arrested for multiple felony charges,” Lewis said.

Lewis said news of the arrest gave the victim some relief.

“She’s doing well,” said Lewis about the victim. “She’s obviously been notified of the arrest before we released it to the media and she’s doing okay.”

Lewis added that the department is bringing awareness to this situation because they believe there could be other victims out there.

“An incident like this, in my experience, isn’t a ‘one off’ [because] it’s so random. They didn’t know each other [and] we wouldn’t be surprised if there were some other incidents around the region with maybe a suspect with a similar description, where maybe we can close some of the cases,” Lewis said.

Police ask anyone with any information about this incident to contact Chesterfield Police at 804-748-1251.

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