Victim of Summerlin abduction provides descriptions of rapists

Karen Zekan

Thursday, Jan. 14, 1999 | 10:19 a.m.

A Las Vegas woman abducted from a Summerlin parking lot and raped in the desert almost two weeks ago has helped police develop composite drawings of two of her attackers.

Fliers have been distributed to patrol officers throughout the valley and to police in other states, as well as being posted on bulletin boards throughout the community. Yet days continue to pass and not a suspect has surfaced.

Most unsettling to Summerlin residents are the terrifying facts of the Jan. 2 kidnapping: It happened at 6 p.m. in a busy shopping complex's well-lit parking lot to a woman about to get into her car.

The victim told police that she was attempting to open the driver's door when someone grabbed her from behind and pulled her into a car parked next to hers in the lot near the Del Taco fast-food restaurant on West Lake Mead Boulevard near Buffalo Drive.

Three men were in the car. The driver sped off to a desert area west of the strip mall, where, according to Metro's sexual assault Lt. Tom Monahan, two of the men raped the woman over several hours and then dumped her on a street corner at Soaring Gulls Drive and Cheyenne Avenue, just east of Rampart Boulevard.

She walked back to her car before calling for help.

Two of the suspects are believed to be Hispanic men in their late 20s or early 30s. One of the men has been described as 5 feet 9 inches, 150 pounds, sandy brown hair and dark eyes. He was wearing black stone-washed jeans, a white short-sleeved shirt, a gray vest, two gold chains and two gold rings. He spoke English but with a slight accent, and had a knife.

The second suspect is about 5 feet 6 inches, 160 pounds and has black hair, dark eyes and a dark complexion. He was last seen wearing black 501 Levi jeans and black tennis shoes and was armed with a Ruger medium-frame black semiautomatic pistol, possibly a P93.

The third suspect was not seen well enough to describe but was heard to speak Spanish, police said.

The men's vehicle is believed to be an older model four-door sedan light tan or gray without any shine -- indicating to police that it may be heavily oxidized or even primer.

"We don't believe she was targeted," Monahan said.

"We believe this was a crime of opportunity, which makes it all the worse. How many times have any of us been walking to our cars in parking lots at 6 o'clock at night? What seems innocuous can in a matter of seconds become something that is very dangerous."

While frightening, Monahan said the incident -- beyond the violence -- is not remarkable.

From July 1-Dec. 31, 1998, Metro's emergency dispatchers received reports of 11 sexual assaults occurring in the same general neighborhood as the Jan. 2 attack, and a total of 801 sex crimes throughout the rest of the valley.

What numbers Metro has to work with reflect that an average of 200 reports of children and adults who have been raped or molested are received every month.

Skewing the statistics is the reality that a sex crime is often disclosed during interviews with detectives who had initially responded to a report of a kidnapping or robbery, Monahan said.

Police came forward with information on the case only recently, prompted by local media's interest.

Monahan listed several reasons for the time delay in sharing details with the media, among them that facts of a rape aren't something a victim can easily rattle off in a few minutes after the attack.

"These incidents are highly traumatic," Monahan said. "We have a woman who was abducted from her car, sexually assaulted by three individuals, dropped off and forced to walk, then forced to give police a recollection of what happened.

"What information we have to work with today has taken several interviews. A police officer's primary objective is to apprehend the criminal, but we also have to be sensitive to the victim's medical and psychological needs."

Police also seek a victim's permission before releasing details to the media -- a courtesy, Monahan said, "because we don't want to amplify what's going on."

Monahan seemed disappointed that the media appeared to pounce on the case solely because it happened in Summerlin -- a suburb seemingly free of crime to the casual observer.

"I only wish we could get this much attention for all the sexual assaults that occur," he said.

Anyone with information on the men's identities, their whereabouts, the location of their car or any unusual activities that may have happened in the 7500 block of West Lake Mead Boulevard on Jan. 2 is asked to call Detective Dirk Thomas at 229-3421 or Secret Witness at 385-5555.