A Santa Ana jury found a 34-year-old man guilty of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman outside a Fullerton nightclub in 2015, after he pretended to be a cop to lure the woman into a vehicle, the Orange District Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.
Nelson Mauricio Lunaty Garcia of Chino Hills was convicted of 6 felony sex crimes as well as a misdemeanor firearm charge and assault charge, the DA’s office said. He faces a maximum sentence of 95 years to life in state prison.
Two years ago, during an evening in early September 2015, Garcia approached a woman outside a nightclub in Fullerton called InCahoots, prosecutors said.
Fullerton police released this booking photo of Nelson Mauricio Lunaty Garcia on Sept. 10, 2015.
Pretending to be a cop, he asked the woman if she had been drinking and gave her a fake sobriety test, prosecutors said, using a tongue compressor and a Q-Tip.
The woman believed him, thinking he was a police officer or security guard, and thought he was going to arrest her, police said at the time.
Then, he forced the woman into the backseat of his vehicle, prosecutors said. He told her that he would release her if she cooperated, police said.
He bound the woman’s hands together with zip ties so she couldn’t escape, driving for several miles to a secluded location, prosecutors said.
There, he sexually assaulted her in a number of ways.
Among the sexual assault-related charges Garcia was found guilty of include sodomy by force, sexual penetration by foreign object and force, and forcible oral copulation.
After the assault, Garcia took the victim back to the InCahoots parking lot, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Garcia had approached another woman in the parking lot earlier that same evening, when she was sitting in her car alone.
When he approached the other woman, he also asked her if she had been drinking and offered her water and a police escort home, prosecutors said. The woman declined and drove away.
Investigators were able to track down Garcia later when two friends of the woman he assaulted had spotted his car in the InCahoots parking lot one week later, police said.
They had come to the nightclub to contact management about the assault when they saw the vehicle, which fit the description the victim had given, police said.
Fullerton police arrested Garcia at the scene along with a loaded gun, handcuffs, tongue depressors, Q-Tips and zip ties, including “cut zip ties on the rear floorboard of his vehicle,” Orange County prosecutors said in a press release.
Garcia was also convicted of felony counts of kidnapping to commit a sex offense, attempted forcible rape and attempted kidnapping to commit a sex offense. He will be sentenced in court on September 27 at 1:30 p.m.
from KTLA http://ift.tt/2wHG6RZ
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