A 42-year-old man who exposed himself to girls walking near two Santa Ana schools and a 49-year-old man who molested two children in Orange County pleaded guilty and received their punishment last week. Meanwhile, the case against Santa Ana's alleged serial molester widened.
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A 42-year-old Santa Ana man last week copped to exposing himself to girls walking near two schools in town and was sentenced to 68 days in jail and placed on three years of informal probation. Carlos Sanchez Hernandez, who made eye contact with the girls while masturbating in his car parked near Godinez Fundamental High School and Carr Intermediate School last spring, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts each of indecent exposure and child annoyance. Previous coverage: Carlos Sanchez Hernandez Busted for Jerking It While Staring at Santa Ana School Girls: Police
It's been tough to nail down exactly how many children Edwin Echeverria is accused of having molested after meeting them at his Santa Ana apartment. Cops in that city said there were at least eight boys as young as 10 for sure and three more possibles when the 22-year-old was arrested earlier this month. The Orange County District Attorney's office originally charged Echeverria with 14 felonies in connection with five of the boys, but his original arraignment was delayed because Deputy District Attorney Whitney Bokosky, the prosecutor assigned to the case, was pulling together more charges due to more confirmed victims. Heading into arraignment Friday, the tally was back up to eight boys, but Bokosky got another delay to evaluate more cases, opening up the possibility of even more counts. We're now up to around 10 victims, not that it's going to matter much when it comes to Echeverria's punishment should he be found guilty. Back when we were just talking about five victims, he faced a maximum sentence of 275 years in state prison. He's still being held in lieu of $1 million bail. Previous coverage: Edwin Echeverria Faces 14 Felonies, 275 Years in Prison for Molesting at Least 5 Boys: DA
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A 49-year-old man wounded in an officer-involved shooting in May 2010 pleaded guilty last week to lewd and lascivious acts and two counts of forcible lewd acts upon a child–earning a sentence of 24 years in state prison. An Anaheim police officer was serving a molestation-arrest warrant to Daniel Roy Smith in a Laguna Niguel apartment building when he ran off, spurring the lockdown of a nearby elementary school and, eventually, the shooting that put him in Mission Hospital. Smith's victims were 8 and 13 years old.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.