21-YEAR-OLD TO STAND TRIAL IN T.O. RAPES.Byline: Jesse Hiestand Daily News Staff Writer Moments after describing how she was nearly raped in the bedroom of her home, a 44-year-old Thousand Oaks Thousand Oaks, residential city (1990 pop. 104,352), Ventura co., S Calif., in a farm area; inc. 1964. Avocados, citrus, vegetables, strawberries, and nursery products are grown. woman stood up Thursday in a Ventura courtroom witness box, clenched clench tr.v. clenched, clench·ing, clench·es 1. To close tightly: clench one's teeth; clenched my fists in anger. 2. her jaw and pointed across the room. ``That's him,'' she said, gesturing toward Jose A. Zavala. The 21-year-old Thousand Oaks man is charged with breaking into three homes earlier this year and raping two women, attempting to rape another woman and stealing property. On Wednesday, after a one-day preliminary hearing, Municipal Court Judge Arturo Gutierrez ordered Zavala to stand trial on two counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and five counts of burglary. Zavala is scheduled for arraignment A criminal proceeding at which the defendant is officially called before a court of competent jurisdiction, informed of the offense charged in the complaint, information, indictment, or other charging document, and asked to enter a plea of guilty, not guilty, or as otherwise permitted in Superior Court on May 15, where a trial date likely will be set. If convicted on all the charges, Zavala faces at least 25 years in prison, Deputy District Attorney Tina Nunes-Ober said. Zavala was arrested Feb. 22, a few hours after he allegedly broke into the 44-year-old victim's home and attacked her. Ventura County Sheriff's Department The Ventura County Sheriff's Department (VCSD) provides law enforcement for the unincorporated areas of Ventura County, California, USA, as well as several cities within the county. The cities that VCSD serves are Camarillo, Fillmore, Moorpark, Ojai, and Thousand Oaks. detectives had been seeking a man suspected of terrorizing women in a neighborhood north of the Ventura Freeway The Ventura Freeway is a freeway in southern California running from Ventura to Pasadena. It is the principal east-west route through Ventura County and in the southern San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County. and east of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza The Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza is a performing arts and administrative center located in Thousand Oaks, California. It was built in 1994 on the former site of "Jungleland" at a cost of $63.8 million. . The 44-year-old victim testified Thursday that an intruder An attacker that gains, or tries to gain, unauthorized access to a system. See attacker, intrusion and IDS. , whom she again identified as Zavala, first entered her home Feb. 10, probably through an open door. She said he quickly fled when she confronted him. Afterward, she said, she made sure to lock all the doors of her home each night before going to bed. But early on the morning of Feb. 22, she unlocked her bedroom door to let heat circulate into the room, where her 5-year-old son also slept. A few seconds later, she said she heard a click and realized someone had locked the door from the inside. ``I looked up and saw the same person standing there that had been there two weeks before,'' she recalled. ``I went for the door and he tackled me and we both fell,'' she explained. ``He immediately put his hands around my throat and started strangling me.'' The woman said she struggled furiously with the man and, despite being unable to breathe or talk, was able to get to her feet. Her assailant, however, had pulled down his pants, grabbed her by the hair with both hands and began pulling her toward him, she said. Continuing to fight the attacker, she said he eventually fled by breaking a window and diving out headfirst head·first also head·fore·most adv. 1. With the head leading; headlong: went headfirst down the stairs. 2. Impetuously; brashly. . ``I didn't want to let anything happen to me in front of my son,'' she said. Throughout the woman's testimony, Zavala sat alone in a room next to the courtroom, listening to the proceedings on a headset operated by a Spanish-speaking court interpreter. Deputy Public Defender public defender, governmental official who represents indigent persons accused of crime. U.S. Supreme Court decisions expanding the right to counsel to pretrial proceedings and holding that a person cannot be sentenced to even one day in jail unless a lawyer was Joe Villasana requested Zavala's placement in the adjoining room for each of the victim's testimony as a precaution against any false identification. After each victim testified, Zavala was brought into the courtroom so they could look at him. In each instance, the victims positively identified Zavala as being the attacker, Nunes-Ober said. A 64-year-old resident of a mobile-home park, said she found Zavala standing outside her home the night of Jan. 25. She said he forced his way in, choked her and raped her. ``I was thinking I was really going to die,'' she said. ``I couldn't believe this was happening to me.'' A 57-year-old woman described how she was raped Feb. 20 at her home in a condominium condominium In modern property law, individual ownership of one dwelling unit within a multidwelling building. Unit owners have undivided ownership interest in the land and those portions of the building shared in common. complex. Zavala also is charged with burglarizing the victims' homes by breaking in and stealing property. |
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