Police Narrow Search for 10-Year-Old’s Assailant

An appeal for information in the sexual assault of a 10-year-old boy at a high school basketball game last week has yielded the names of several suspects, a Cypress police investigator said Friday.

Detective William McCullers declined to say whether an arrest is imminent but said investigators have solid leads on the assailant’s identity.

“We have received numerous phone calls from people who believe they have seen the guy, and as a result have several names of people we will be talking to,” McCullers said.

The incident occurred about 9:10 p.m. Jan. 17 near the end of a basketball game that pitted the varsities of Cypress High School and Anaheim’s Loara High School.

The boy had been attending the game with his parents. When it appeared that the Loara team would lose, he left his parents and strolled into a hallway near a restroom, police said.

Someone approached the boy, led him into the restroom and sexually assaulted him, McCullers said. The boy described the assailant as a male Latino, 35 to 40 years old, about 5 feet, 5 inches tall, 160 to 170 pounds, with short, straight, dark hair and pimples or freckles. He was wearing a red sweat shirt and blue or gray jeans.

McCullers said a ticket taker noticed a man matching the description who had been watching the game from outside the gym just moments before the assault.

There are also believed to be witnesses who saw the man and the boy in the hallway just before the assault, but they have not come forward, McCullers said.

On Wednesday, investigators gathered some of the 600 fans from both schools who attended the game. But none of the 40 or so people who showed up could remember seeing the suspect.

Police also distributed at the two high schools an account of the incident and a composite drawing of the suspect.

Cypress High Principal Jack Weber said several students have come forward with information.

Weber said that the incident has “heightened awareness of the high school staff and the entire community” but that no extra precautions are planned at future games. Administrators from both schools were on duty at the game as well as two male ticket takers.