Thread: Man, 18, Guilty in Sex Attack on Woman Near Bike Trail

Man, 18, Guilty in Sex Attack on Woman Near Bike Trail

By Daniela Deane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 8, 2007; B06



On a postcard-blue day last July, just after watching the World Cup final with friends, a 42-year-old Arlington woman decided to take her usual walk along the county's popular Four Mile Run bike trail. She slipped on pink flip-flops, grabbed her cellphone and sunglasses, and headed out into the bright evening sun.

A half-hour later, she was lying in a secluded wooded area just off the path, naked from the waist down, bleeding profusely with her eyes swollen shut. She was in so much pain, she testified, that she didn't realize she had been sexually assaulted with a stick.

After six hours of deliberations yesterday, an Arlington Circuit Court jury convicted Rubio A. Angel, an 18-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador, on four felony counts in the July 9 attack. He was found guilty of abduction with intent to defile, malicious wounding and two counts of object sexual penetration. He faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced May 25. The Washington Post generally does not identify sexual assault victims.

Paul Radicic told the jury that he and a friend were walking on the bike path on their way to dinner in Shirlington about 6:30 p.m. when they heard moaning and saw a lime-green moped idling without a driver. Then they saw a young man with a T-shirt wrapped around his head sprint out of the woods toward the moped.

"She was mauled," Radicic told the jury about the woman he found in the woods about 35 feet from the path between South George Mason and South Walter Reed drives. "Her head was all swollen up, all of her hair was caked in blood. . . . She couldn't open her eyelids if she wanted to."

Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Molly H. Newton told the jury that Angel, who was unarmed, surprised the woman from behind. He kicked and punched her repeatedly in the head, then dragged her facedown over the asphalt into the woods, where he sodomized her with a stick, Newton said.

Newton said Angel, who was 17 at the time, was a "very dangerous sexual predator" who was on a "rampage." Two other local women testified during the three-day trial that Angel had groped them in separate incidents, one about 45 minutes before the bike path attack.

In an assault June 18, one woman said, she was walking her dogs near Thomas Jefferson Middle School when Angel approached her from behind and yanked down her athletic shorts. The jury also found Angel guilty yesterday of a misdemeanor charge of sexual battery in that attack.

Newton said Angel also groped two women in Alexandria on the same day as the bike path attack. Angel already pleaded guilty in those assaults in a juvenile court in Alexandria, she said.

Angel confessed to the bike path attack during a police interrogation with two Spanish-speaking detectives, according to testimony. Angel's attorney, John C. Youngs, argued that the detectives elicited the confession by lying to his client and attempting to befriend him. He said the case was largely about "pressure, manipulation, suggestion and fear."

"They're allowed to lie," Newton explained to the jury. "This is not a social gathering of friends." She said Angel was "not this young, naive 17-year-old" the defense was depicting.

It was the lime-green moped that led police to Angel. He was arrested a little more than two weeks after the bike path attack, after an Arlington detective saw him working on the moped in the driveway of his home in the 800 block of South Glebe Road.

Police had been searching for the unusual moped. The detective persuaded Angel to let him photograph the teenager with his moped. One of the victims then identified him from the photograph.

Newton said the bike path case showed how "everything can change in an instant, suddenly, without warning." The victim testified that she was having recurring flashbacks about the incident.

Outside the courtroom, the victim said that if France had won the World Cup instead of Italy, she wouldn't have been out walking on the path.

"I would have been out celebrating instead," she said. "And this wouldn't have happened to me."


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© 2007 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02372.html

I wonder if this had happened to Jenna Bush would Jorge do anything to really secure our borders and deport these lowlife scum? He always talks about how his number one priority is to protect the American people. Oh wait, I guess that only counts for his family and friends, who live behind secure fences with armed secret service guards protecting them. The rest of us who actually have to live with this sub-human scum don't matter.

To Jorge, we are just lazy, worthless slobs, who refuse to do any kind of hard work. His beloved amigos from south of the border are the ones who really built this country anyway. We are all just slovenly, fat, racist, restrictionist gringos who just don't understand how wonderful these good hearted folk really are, with their incredible Hispanic family values.

This guy is a filthy animal!! Cage him and deport him to a prison in latin America. I'm sure they know what to do with sickos like this guy.

Heck, in Latin America, this kind of stuff is accepted. Women are treated as objects, open to be raped and assaulted as soon as they turn 12 or 13 years old. In fact, in Mexico, 12 years old is the legal age of consent for girls. I don't think they would do anything to him if he did this in Latin America, that's why so many of them commit these attacks when they get here. They think they can do as they did in their home countries and get away with it.

How many times have we seen illegals get busted for impregnating 14 and 15 year old girls and then when they are arraigned in court, they come up with the excuse that they didn't know it was wrong, because it is normal practice back home where they came from. It happens everyday back there, and it will keep on happening to our women and girls here as long as we have these sick Mexican and Latin American bastards free roaming the streets, especially if they are illegal.

The question is, what is Bushwad and his worthless stooges doing about it. Unfortunately, it seems like they intend to do nothing, except for giving them all amnesty of course.