Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Assault case has unusual aspects

On Halloween, a 19-year-old woman was kidnapped, held captive for four and a half hours, driven around town and raped repeatedly.

She was raped at gunpoint by three or four teenage boys. All of them were strangers. Most of them assaulted her multiple times.

On July 22, four suspects, who are all being tried as adults, will be going on trial for the crime. If convicted, each faces a life prison sentence.

It's a perplexing case because not only is it atypical for rape cases -- rapes are usually committed by one suspect and the victim typically knows the suspect -- but because of the age of the suspects and the violence involved.

The suspects: Sergio Chan is 16. His brother, Oscar Chan, just celebrated his birthday in the Clark County Detention Center. He is now 15. Daniel McDaris and Alexander Barrillos celebrated their latest birthdays in jail, too. McDaris is now 17 and Barrillos turned 20.

The four stand accused of the brutal Halloween kidnap and rape and are believed to have kidnapped another woman at gunpoint three days later. In the second case, police say, two teenagers drove around with their victim in her car before letting her go without assaulting her because she was "cool."

The case has surprised many of those involved.

"It's a very rare occasion when we get those Hollywood-type kidnapping, stranger gang rape-type situations," Metro Lt. Jeff Carlson said.

While Las Vegas statistics on gang rapes are unavailable, anecdotally the people responsible for arresting or treating victims and perpetrators of gang rapes say such cases are rare.

John Pacult, a licensed clinical social worker who handles rape cases, said the behavior shows signs of an antisocial personal disorder.

"If they were adults they'd be called psychopaths," Pacult said. "Those behaviors are very aggressive. We're talking about potentially sadistic type of offenders who get off on their victims' pain, torture and their suffering.

"They are in a very small offender size, but they are definitely the most dangerous."

The suspects are accused of kidnapping a fitness trainer at gunpoint as she walked to her car after finishing work. Police say the woman was forced into her Dodge Neon, driven to a wash near Sahara Avenue and Sloan Lane and forced to undress.

Grand jury testimony alleges that one suspect kept a gun trained on her while she was sexually assaulted.

She was then tied up and forced naked into the trunk of her car. The victim testified that the suspects drove around and showed her off to friends who didn't believe she was in the trunk.

She told police they forced her to perform sex acts on them before leaving her with her jacket and shoes at Washington Avenue and Los Feliz Street.

Three days later, another reported abduction had similarities.

A woman said she had been sitting in a Nellis Boulevard shopping center when two teenagers pulled a gun on her, forced their way into her Ford Mustang and drove around for two hours with her.

She said she was dropped off near Bonanza Road and Lamb Boulevard after she persuaded them not to rob a 7-Eleven. The suspects gave her $1 so she could catch a bus, she said.

Before she was let go, the woman said her captors discussed in Spanish what they should do with her. Among the options, she said, was killing her and "doing to her what they did to the other girl last Wednesday."

Police say the victim was let go because a suspect "began to feel bad because the girl was, in his words 'cool.' "

The attorneys for Sergio Chan, Barrillos and McDaris did not return phone calls seeking comment. Paul Wommer, who represents Oscar Chan, declined to comment.

Over the past 12 years, Pacult said, he has seen only a "handful" of cases involving two or more rapists.

"The majority of the incidents involved adolescents who used date-rape drugs or were under the influence of alcohol or drugs," Pacult said. "Most of them also involved peer pressure and there was one ringleader and the others who participated wanted to be accepted. They didn't want to be called names like 'sissy.' "

According to U.S. Justice Department statistics, of the 338,170 sexual assaults in the United States in 1999, fewer than 7 percent -- or 22,510 of them -- involved multiple perpetrators.

Seventy-eight percent of the multiple-offender sexual assaults in the country that year were committed by males between 12 and 20 years old, Justice Department statistics show. Fifty-five percent were committed by white males and 17 percent by black men. The remaining could not be identified by race.

Colleen Sisley, the clinical director of the Family and Child Treatment Center who works with rape cases, said cases in which a stranger is the perpetrator are rare.

"The common myth is that the victim just happened to be walking down the street on the wrong side of town and was attacked by a stranger, but the reality is that scenario is far less common," Sisley said.

The chances of rehabilitating someone capable of crimes such as those the teens are accused of is next to nil, Pacult said.

"They've got some pretty serious character flaws," Pacult said. "You can't treat someone with a personality disorder, and that's what we're talking about."

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