SAN DIEGO — Two 16-year-old boys were charged Monday with rape, kidnapping, sodomy and other crimes in connection with a sexual assault this month of two girls in a Rancho Peñasquitos park.
Leonel Contreras and William Steven Rodriguez pleaded not guilty to 16 charges at an arraignment in San Diego Superior Court. Judge Michael Smyth ordered the pair held on $5 million each.
Prosecutors charged the juveniles as adults, which means the potential prison sentences are much greater. Thirteen of the charges carry maximum sentences of 25 years to life, meaning the two possibly face at least 325 years to life in prison.
Deputy District Attorney Wendy Patrick described a harrowing ordeal that began the evening of Sept. 3 when the two girls, ages 15 and 16, went to the park on Spindletop Road. They had been attending a family birthday party nearby.
Patrick said Rodriguez also lives in the neighborhood. But she emphasized three times that the attacks were a “stranger rape,” and neither of the girls knew their assailants.
The girls were accosted at knifepoint by two assailants in the park, Patrick told the judge. They were led out of the park and across the street, up an embankment and into a secluded area.
There, Patrick said the girls were forced to take off their clothes and then sexually assaulted, enduring what the prosecutor told Smyth was “every kind of rape you can imagine.”
The assailants took turns attacking each of the victims during the assault, which Patrick estimated lasted 30 to 40 minutes. It ended only when the attackers heard the voices of the girls’ family members calling for them.
Before fleeing on a bicycle that was hidden nearby, the two boys threatened the girls with harm if they told anyone about the assault, Patrick said.
The boys were arrested Thursday but were not together at the time. Rodriguez was arrested in Poway; Contreras in National City. How they knew each other was not explained in court.
Patrick said both are in the United States illegally.
READ MORE HERE: SIGN ON SAN DIEGO
No comments:
Post a Comment