Long Beach : School Security Guard Held on Kidnaping, Rape Charges

A school security officer who was arrested and charged with kidnaping a woman and gang raping her pleaded not guilty and was suspended from his job with the Long Beach Unified School District.

Victor Lopez Jr., 27, was arrested along with three other men identified as gang members by sheriff’s deputies early Friday morning. Deputies said they found Lopez holding a semiautomatic pistol to a woman’s head in the back seat of a car, while another man sat in the front seat and two more waited outside.

The San Francisco woman, who was in town visiting relatives, told authorities that she was abducted near the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach while she was on her way to buy formula for her baby. Deputies assigned to patrol the Metro Rail Blue Line spotted the car, its license plate covered with tape and plastic bags, in the 1300 block of Lime Avenue.

Lopez and the other suspects, Oniva David Tautolo, Owen Fuimaono Jr. and Lau Talo Jr., remained in jail Wednesday. Bail for each was raised to $150,000 during arraignment Tuesday in Compton Municipal Court, Sheriff’s Deputy Rich Erickson said.

Trial for the four suspects has been set for Nov. 13. They are charged with rape, kidnaping and oral copulation. In addition, Tautolo and Talo are charged with sodomy.

The arrest has shocked Lopez’s co-workers in the school district, where he has been a security guard for 2 1/2 years. “I just couldn’t believe it,” said Joe Romero, the district’s chief of security.

Before Lopez joined the school district, officials did a background check and found that he had no prior criminal record, Romero said. Lopez, who is single and lives with his mother in Burbank, had worked for another police agency before joining the district, according to Romero.