An El Paso, Texas man is wanted on a warrant charging him with second-degree criminal sexual penetration for allegedly drugging a woman and raping her.
Danny Rivera, 24, is wanted on the nationwide-warrant signed on Aug. 12.
State Police Investigator Edward Garcia wrote in court documents that he enlisted the help of the FBI to identity Rivera from a seflie the victim allegedly took with him before the incident, on June 7, and subsequently by the people he was sharing a hotel room with, his cousin and aunt.
Rivera is charged with second-degree criminal sexual penetration resulting in personal injury and distribution of flunitrazepam, a benzodiazepine commonly associated with date rape.
The case
The victim and her male friend went to the Inn of the Mountain Gods on the Mescalero Apache Reservation together, but she went to “The Game Room” where she started talking to a man standing next to a casino machine, watching another man play, and told him that her 65-year-old boyfriend ditched her, Garcia wrote of the woman’s account.
They went from there to a bar and then she took a selfie with him while walking in a hallway at 10:03 p.m., her last memory before waking up in the hospital attached to an IV line. Her friend called her phone, a nurse answered, and he went to the hospital and stayed with her until she was released, Garcia wrote.
Her friend told investigators that he had called her phone and a man with a Spanish accent, answered and said, “Hey bro come get your (expletive) we’ve done (expletive) her,” Garcia wrote.
Garcia obtained security footage from the hotel/casino. Through this footage, he tracked the woman’s movement from the gaming room to the bar with a man to the elevator where the woman was having some difficulty walking. He also tracked her getting off the elevator on the seventh floor with the man and going to a room at 10:06 p.m. with the man and the man carrying and dragging her out of the room at 11:01 p.m.
The footage showed her getting into the elevator with the man, who dragged her down some of the hallway on the fourth floor before dropping her and walking away. A maid found her and radioed for help, Garcia wrote.
Rivera later went to the El Paso Police Department on July 13 for an interview, where he declined to give a statement and asked for an attorney.
A DNA report found the woman’s dress tested positive for male DNA, Garcia wrote.
A sexual examination nurse wrote in her report that the woman had vaginal bruising and at the hospital, a urine sample showed benzodiazepine, a painkiller and sedative, and the woman said she didn’t take it.
She was covered in bruises as well, her biceps, left knee, both inner thighs and her left outer thigh, Garcia wrote.
