SANTA ANA, Calif.—A 44-year-old man was convicted Feb. 1 of the abduction and multiple rapes of an 11-year-old girl 25 years ago in Santa Ana.
Ismael Salgado was convicted of a count of kidnapping to commit rape and five counts of rape, all felonies. He is scheduled to be sentenced May 10.
In closing arguments Jan. 31, Deputy District Attorney Kristin Bracic pointed to images from a gas station surveillance video to show Mr. Salgado was buying gas—just as the victim claimed—before she was repeatedly raped in two separate locations.
“Ismael Salgado is the driver” of the Honda Accord he was filling with gas after he and his friend, Jose Andres Plascencia, 43, abducted the victim on Feb. 3, 1999, Ms. Bracic said.
Ms. Bracic reminded jurors during her closing argument that a Santa Ana police officer testified about pulling over Mr. Salgado in a car that matched the description of the suspect vehicle around the time of the rapes. The car’s license plate also matched a partial plate number provided by a witness, she added.
“You also have DNA,” Ms. Bracic argued.
Mr. Salgado’s DNA was found inside the victim’s genitalia, and his genetic material was also on her breasts, matching the girl’s testimony that the driver of the vehicle bit her on the chest while assaulting her, Ms. Bracic told jurors.
Mr. Salgado’s attorney, Peter Boldin of the Alternate Defender’s Office, argued that the surveillance video photo of the suspect from the gas station did not match a photo of his client taken around the time of the assaults.
“These are two completely different individuals,” Mr. Boldin argued.
Mr. Boldin also argued that the victim’s statements to police even in the days after the assaults contained discrepancies.
“These are not just minor details,” he said. “These are like, ‘I wasn’t raped in the front seat’ ... but that’s completely different from what she said two days earlier.”
Mr. Boldin said that after the victim was raped, authorities distributed the surveillance photo throughout the neighborhood and put out a call through local news for help finding the suspect, but no one came forward saying it was Mr. Salgado, even though he lived in the area.
Mr. Boldin also downplayed the DNA evidence, arguing his client was a “minor contributor.” He suggested that perhaps the defendant’s semen hadn’t been cleaned up from the back seat of the car stemming from an earlier sexual encounter, and it somehow ended up on the victim.
“That’s consistent with a transfer [of DNA] and not a direct deposit,” Mr. Boldin said.
Mr. Boldin acknowledged that Mr. Salgado and Mr. Plascencia were friends who were on the high school basketball team. Mr. Placencia was convicted in the rapes last year and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
The victim testified that she and her friend, who was 13 at the time, were walking around Jerome Park and had just left the community center there during the early evening of Feb. 3, 1999, when two men in a Honda pulled up and encouraged the girls to get in.
“There were two guys trying to get our attention,” she testified. “We said, ‘No.’” But the men “wouldn’t leave us alone,” she testified. Eventually, her friend agreed to get in the car, so the victim followed, she said.
The victim got in the front seat and her friend was in the back seat, she said. The driver was short—about 5-foot-4—but his friend was about 6 feet tall, she testified.
The victim’s friend said she wanted out of the car, so they let her out on Myrtle Street, but when the victim also tried to get out, the driver “pulled me in, pulling my hair,” she testified.
Her friend “got out of the car and started yelling,” the victim said. As the victim continued to struggle to get out, the passenger pushed her down in the front seat from the back seat, she testified.
The driver went to a gas station at Raitt Street and Edinger Avenue, where the passenger again “pushed me down to the floor” of the car as she “yelled, ‘They’re going to kill me,” she testified.
Mr. Salgado, who was the driver at the time, went in to buy gas, according to Ms. Bracic.
The two then drove across the street to a secluded parking lot of Carr Intermediate School, where Mr. Salgado allegedly raped her in the front seat, the victim testified. When Mr. Salgado was done, Mr. Plascencia began sexually assaulting and raping her, she testified.
The girl was then driven to Valley High School, she testified. She could not remember what happened while en route because, “I kind of blacked it out.”
When they arrived at the school, “They continued raping me,” she said.
Eventually, the two “dropped me off at a corner” that coincidentally was near her grandmother’s home, she testified. Her grandmother was out of town, but her aunt was there and the police were called.
After the victim’s friend got away, she wasn’t sure what happened, so she went home to wait to hear from her, Ms. Bracic said in court papers. When the friend did not hear from the victim, she walked to her family’s apartment to see if she was OK, and by that time police had been called, the prosecutor said.
The girl was taken for a medical exam the next day and a nurse gathered evidence. The girl was so “badly bruised” she was too swollen for some exams, so she had to return the next day, Ms. Bracic said during Mr. Plascencia’s trial.
The evidence collected was “consistent with a brutal sexual assault,” Ms. Bracic said.
Police tracked down surveillance video from the gas station but investigators could not identify the suspects, Ms. Bracic said.
In 2016, the case was revived when officers received a DNA hit with Mr. Salgado, Ms. Bracic said. Police narrowed down other friends of Mr. Salgado’s from 1999, and focused on Mr. Plascencia and investigators were able to get a DNA match, she said.
