UPDATE: Teen accused of raping Greenfield girl to be tried as adult

UPDATE: 12/21/2017 5:52 p.m.: A teen accused of getting a young girl drunk and raping her in Greenfield will be tried as an adult.

Monterey County prosecutors called 18-year-old Felipe Bautista a sexual predator.

The teen allegedly took a 14-year-old girl to the outskirts of Greenfield in August, got her drunk to a state of unconsciousness, raped her, and recruited other people to dump her body.

The girl was found with a lethal blood alcohol level of 0.51. The legal limit for driving is .08. For a 90lbs girl, that means 10 drinks in a relatively short amount of time.

“Luckily, she’d been (airlifted) to Santa Clara County hospitals, where they were able to keep her alive… intubated on a breathing machine to keep her alive,” said Steve Somers, Monterey County Deputy District Attorney.

Prosecutors said, at age 17, Bautista was capable of knowing right from wrong.

“He was certainly in a position of authority in this thing. The other kids were doing what he told them to and some of them have end up with criminal convictions because of it. They deserve what they get, too,” Somers said.

That’s why the Monterey County District Attorney’s office wanted Bautista to be tried as an adult.

He is among four teens accused in the attack, but prosecutors said he was the ringleader.

The teen is no stranger to the law. Judge Timothy Roberts said Bautista was charged with trespassing in 2015, within a year, he was back with bomb threats and said that ‘he’d shoot up people from Salinas to King City’. But Bautista’s lawyer, James Dozier said, with all his run-ins, the teen never got the help he needed.

“I think his root problem is with alcohol and he’s received absolutely no counseling or treatment for alcoholism,” Dozier said. “The system should have diagnosed the problem and he should have received treatment. That’s my opinion.”

It was an opinion Judge Roberts did not agree with.

Bautista is being held at the Monterey County Jail with no bail at this time.

His arraignment is scheduled for Dec 27.

If convicted, he could face up to nine years in prison.

UPDATE: 8/25/2017 3:48 p.m.: Four Greenfield teens are accused of raping a 14-year-old girl and dumping her on a city sidewalk early August.

They made a court appearance Friday morning.

The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office wants to try one of them, 17-year-old Felipe Bautista, as an adult.

“He was the direct rapist,” said deputy DA Steve Somers.

Investigators said the victim was friends with some in the group. Instead of helping her, they allegedly got her drunk to the point she could have died.

Somers said Bautista is also suspected of assaulting a 17-year-old in July.

“There’s a second case, where he was involved in sexual battery. This was about a month prior to the rape, the female fled the car, ran through the field and was able to escape,” Somers said.

And law enforcement is seeing a trend.

“Two cases of sexual assault within a month with the same person accused of them both is certainly a pattern. There may be more cases out there,” Somers said.

Those cases haven’t been filed, but one of the suspects is giving investigators another lead.

“The location where this happens, one of the minors described as a place where … they had a secret place where they would bring girls to have sex with them,” Somers said.

The other three teens and 22-year-old Angel Ramirez are also accused of rape and acting as accessories to the crime.

PREVIOUS STORY:

8/23/17 6:20 P.M.: Two more people have been arrested in connection to a teen rape case earlier this month in Greenfield, according to Greenfield Police.

The department says one of the suspects is a 14-year-old boy, the other 22-year-old man named Angel Ramirez. Officers say Ramirez also confessed to having a relationship with a 13-year-old girl.

That brings a total of five people arrested in connection to the August rape case where a 14-year-old girl was found blacked out near her home on Scott Circle. Police say that teen had a dangerous blood alcohol level and was raped. Three teens were arrested initially in connection to the case.

On July 11 a 12-year-old girl was found dumped on 9th Street in the city. Her blood alcohol level was near lethal. She was not raped. One of the underage suspects is also connected to this case.

PREVIOUS STORY: In just over a month, two young girls were left on Greenfield sidewalks with nearly deadly levels of alcohol.

“These boys were definitely doing some very serious and brutal things to these young girls,” said Edmundo Rodriguez, Greenfield police interim commander

Investigators said one of them, a 14-year-old, was also raped.

“They went to an area outside of the city limits nearby here in Greenfield, where they drank, got intoxicated. She drank to the point where she became unconscious. She blacked out. And that’s when, we believe, the sexual assault happened,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said the girl knew some of the boys and was with them throughout the night. A home security camera caught them dumping the girl on the sidewalk near her house before they took off.

According to police, the girl was found sick and injured in the 1000 block of Scott Circle around 8:45 p.m. She was taken to a Salinas area hospital. Medical staff found evidence that the girl had been sexually assaulted and notified police. The 14-year-old was then airlifted to a San Jose area trauma center because the levels of alcohol in her system could have killed her.

Witnesses helped investigators identify the juveniles as two 16-year-olds and one 17-year-old.

Police said they’re asking for serious felony charges.

“The brutality of the assault, the fact that she could have died as a result of alcohol poisoning because she was so intoxicated, because they provided this alcohol to her, with the intent, we believe, to eventually rape her,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said one of the suspects has also been tied to another similar incident in July when a 12-year-old girl was found unconscious on 9th Street.

“She was intoxicated and had near-lethal levels of alcohol. As far as we know, she was not sexually assaulted,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said the latest victim’s parents were at work when the assault happened last Wednesday.

The Police Department plans to reach out to students and parents to be aware of this behavior and report anything they see.

The boys were booked into Juvenile Hall. The teen suspects were charged with rape, conspiracy to commit rape, oral copulation of a person under 18 years and sodomy.