Richmond High student gang-raped outside dance
(10-26) 18:27 PDT RICHMOND -- It was a crime shocking not only in its brutality but in its callousness, Richmond police say.
A 15-year-old girl leaving early from the homecoming dance at Richmond High School was enticed into a darkened alley just off campus to hang out with as many as a dozen young men who were drinking.
When the girl joined in and became drunk herself, police say, the men attacked her.
One after another, as many as six men raped the girl, police said Monday. Others watched. For more than two hours, no one tried to stop the attacks, and no one called police.
"What's shocking about it is there were so many people willing to involve themselves in such a serious crime," police Lt. Mark Gagan said.
Equally shocking, he said, was "the number of people who witnessed it and who were in the area of it occurring who did not take steps to stop it, report it or help our victim."
The attack happened Friday about 9:30 p.m., shortly after the girl left the Richmond High gym where the homecoming dance was still going on.
Police believe she was waiting for her father to pick her up outside the school at 1250 23rd St., in the northern flatlands of Richmond near Doctors Medical Center. Before he got there, however, a friend from school invited the girl to join a group of people hanging out and drinking, Gagan said.
The girl drank a large amount of alcohol before she was sexually assaulted by members of the group, police said.
Around 11 p.m., the dance let out. Marin Trujillo, a spokesman for the West Contra Costa Unified School District, said the four Richmond police officers and three school administrators who supervised the event had helped to clear the campus.
The attack, however, was happening in an out-of-the way alley just north of campus, police said. In the dark, no one saw a thing.
Somehow, rumors about what was happening finally spread to a house party, Gagan said. A person who heard the story called police around midnight, and when officers showed up, they found the girl, semiconscious, curled up near a lunch table.
Running from the scene was Manuel Ortega, 19, who used to attend Richmond High but dropped out in 2007 to attend a vocational training program, authorities said. Officers caught up to him and arrested him on suspicion of rape, kidnapping and robbery - the assailants stole the girl's jewelry, police said.
Ortega was being held at Contra Costa County Jail in Martinez in lieu of $800,000 bail. Police are still looking for the other men who took part in the attack, and have questioned two juveniles, Gagan said.
Richmond High was a shaken school Monday.
"Everybody was distressed," said the school's principal, Julio Franco, whose daughter attended the homecoming dance. "Anybody who needed to be listened to went to speak to counselors."
Richmond may have a reputation for being a rough town, but such an attack on a 15-year-old girl is "not normal at all," Franco said. "We need to let (the girl's schoolmates) grieve."
Although the incident apparently occurred off campus, Franco took the news hard.
"It's one of our students," he said. "I tell them once they leave their house, they are my children."
Cesar Torres, an 18-year-old senior at the school, said, "It's depressing. People nowadays have no shame. All I can say is that I hope they can catch the sick people who did this and hope that no one else gets hurt."
Charles Ramsey, a member of the West Contra Costa school district, said officials intend to install surveillance cameras at the school by next year. Plans to purchase the cameras had been made before Friday's attack.
"We're moving forward with providing enhanced security," Ramsey said. "We'll redouble our efforts to ensure that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated."
