25-year death sentence for man who kidnapped and raped 11-year-old girl in Santa Ana two decades ago – Orange County Register

A Chicago man who kidnapped and repeatedly raped an 11-year-old girl in Santa Ana more than two decades ago was sentenced Friday, May 10, to 25 years to life in prison.

Ismael Salgado, now 44, was convicted earlier this year of five counts of rape and kidnapping to commit a sex crime in connection with a series of sexual assaults over a period of approximately two hours on February 3, 1999.

The 11-year-old girl’s sexual assault went unsolved for more than 15 years until a DNA hit led police to Salgado and a man he was friends with at the time of the abduction. That former friend – Jose Andres Plascencia – was also convicted last year and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

The victim wrote in a statement read to the court by a prosecutor that the kidnappings and rapes had left her “a shell of the person I should have been,” and told Salgado that “the things you did, never can be forgiven…”

“It’s like a bad movie that keeps playing and haunts me,” the victim wrote. “They have damaged me physically and mentally in ways that words cannot describe.”

Orange County Superior Court Judge Steven Bromberg described Salgado’s behavior as “vicious and callous,” adding that what the victim went through was “unimaginable.”

The judge said: “Time obviously does not heal wounds in a case like this.”

The girl was walking with a 13-year-old friend on Monta Vista Avenue when Salgado, then 19, drove alongside them. Salgado and Plascencia – a passenger in the vehicle – “cat-called” to the girls and persuaded them to get into the car.

The girls quickly changed their minds and the 13-year-old was able to get out of the car. But Salgado grabbed the 11-year-old by her hair and held her in the vehicle as it drove away. He told her, “We’re going to rape you.”

According to the statement, Salgado drove to a gas station where Plascencia placed his hand over the girl’s mouth while Salgado went inside to pay.

The men then drove the girl to empty parking lots at Carr Intermediate School and Valley High School, where they took turns raping her while the other held her down. They then dropped the girl off at a relative’s house, but warned her that if she told anyone what had happened, they would rape her again.

The girl was able to identify the driver from surveillance footage at a gas station, and DNA data was collected as part of a sexual assault investigation. But police were unable to identify the driver or passenger and the case was closed.

In 2011, Salgado — who had since moved to Chicago — had to submit a DNA sample to a law enforcement database after pleading guilty to unrelated grand theft. That sample was eventually linked by investigators to DNA collected during the 11-year-old’s sexual assault investigation in 1999.

Investigators began looking into people Salgado was friends with in 1999, apparently leading them to Plascencia. They secretly collected a DNA sample from a water bottle Plascencia left behind at a gym in Arizona and used it to link him to the kidnapping and rape. During his trial, Plascencia said he drank and did drugs frequently in 1999 and blocked out the night of kidnappings and rapes.

During Salgado’s trial, assistant defense attorney Peter Boldin argued that Salgado had nothing to do with the kidnapping or rapes and told jurors that investigators had arrested the wrong man.

The defense attorney said Salgado lent his car to Plascencia and didn’t know who else was in the vehicle. He argued that Salgado had previously had consensual sex with other women in his car, which could have resulted in his DNA being left on the leather seats and “transferred” to the 11-year-old girl.

The prosecution and defense also argued during the trial whether Salgado was the man captured in the grainy gas station footage and who was identified by the victim at the time. The defense said the man in the video had a different haircut than Salgado, while the prosecution countered that he had the same facial features.