A Chicago man was convicted Thursday of rape and kidnapping charges related to the abduction and repeated sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl in Santa Ana more than two decades ago.
An Orange County Superior Court jury found Ismael Salgado, now 44, guilty of kidnapping to commit a sex crime and five counts of rape related to a series of sexual assaults on Feb. 3, 1999 that 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.
The former friend — Jose Andres Plascencia — previously was convicted and sentenced last year to 25 years to life in prison.
The 11-year-old girl was walking with a 13-year-old friend on Monta Vista Avenue when a car pulled up next to them. The driver — who prosecutors allege was Salgado — and a passenger, identified as Plascencia, persuaded the girls to get into the vehicle.
The girls quickly changed their minds, according to testimony during the trials. The 13-year-old was able to get out of the vehicle, while Salgado pulled the 11-year-old by the hair and kept her in the car while the vehicle pulled away, according to testimony.
Salgado first drove to a nearby gas station, Senior Deputy District Attorney Kristin Bracic told jurors. As Plascencia kept his hand over the girl’s mouth, the prosecutor said, 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, according to testimony. Afterward, the girl was dropped off near a relative’s home.
The girl was able to pick the driver out from surveillance footage at the gas station. But police at the time were unable to identify either the driver or the passenger and the case went cold.
In 2011, Salgado pleaded guilty in an unrelated grand theft case and was required to submit a DNA sample to a law enforcement database. That sample was eventually tied by…
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