Laguna Niguel Man Pleads Guilty in Attack on Woman

Laguna Niguel Man Pleads Guilty in Attack on Woman

by Contributing Editor

A 26-year-old Laguna Niguel man pleaded guilty Thursday and was sentenced to a year in jail for attacking a woman who had been drinking.

The victim, a woman in her 20s, had gone out drinking with friends at a bar on Oct. 13, 2018, and met Ryan Austin Rodriguez, said Deputy District Attorney Michael Carroll when charges were filed.

As the group was leaving, the victim “somehow got separated from her friends with no purse or phone on her, and she walks into the backseat of a car the defendant was sitting in,” Carroll said.

Rodriguez’s friend, who owned the car, had to leave to pick up his girlfriend, so Rodriguez and the victim got out and he called for a Uber ride to his Laguna Niguel home, Carroll said.

“On the way home in the Uber she vomits all over herself, and the next morning she wakes up to him having sex with her,” Carroll said.

The two had never met before that night, Carroll said.

Carroll did not immediately return a phone call Thursday.

Rodriguez, who will have to report to jail after the holidays, pleaded guilty to a felony count of assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury in a plea bargain that dropped felony counts of rape by use of drugs, sodomy by anesthesia and rape, according to court records.

Rodriguez’s attorney, Fred Thiagarajah, said he and his client, “believed we had a triable case,” but took the plea bargain because of the risk of conviction.

“We were ready to proceed to trial, but the offer was too good,” Thiagarajah said. “It’s not a strike and he doesn’t have to register as a sex offender for life.”

Rodriguez, who will be on probation for four years, will only have to register as a sex offender while he is on probation, Thiagarajah said.

Rodriguez “thought (the victim) was giving consent” to have sex, Thiagarajah said.

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All credit goes to Contributing Editor
Originally published on https://mynewsla.com