COSTA MESA : 2nd Sexual Assault at OCC Revealed

Another sexual assault occurred in late January on the campus of Orange Coast College, police said Friday, only a few days after students learned about a more recent attack.

The Jan. 28 incident was one of two reported sexual assaults on campus this year. A March 11 case was announced to students earlier this week.

In the first incident, a man in his mid-20s with blond hair and blue eyes, standing 5 feet, 10 inches and weighing about 145 pounds, struck up a conversation with an 18-year-old student in a college parking lot about 7 p.m., claiming he wanted to take pictures of her, Costa Mesa Police Capt. Tom Lazar said.

The two went to the college’s library, where the man sexually assaulted the student, Lazar said. He described the crime as “kidnaping and rape with a foreign object,” both felonies.

In the March 11 assault, an unarmed man, described as black, in his early 20s with a flattop haircut, 6 feet tall and weighing 200 pounds, got into a car with a 23-year-old student in the Adams Avenue parking lot on campus about 3 p.m. He forced her to drive to the parking lot of a nearby grocery store, where he raped her.

Lazar said the police report for the Jan. 28 incident indicates that police reported it to Orange Coast College security, and that the victim also met with campus security.

John Farmer, chief of campus security, said that he was aware of the sexual assault but that he had been told by the Police Department that it was a less serious assault, a misdemeanor sexual battery.

“I had no idea it was going down as a felony,” he said.

Farmer said he twice asked for a copy of the Costa Mesa police report, but both requests were rejected, presumably, he said, because the incident was still under investigation.

Jim Carnett, a college spokesman, said a college administrator interviewed the victim of the Jan. 28 incident a few days afterward. Based on that interview, administrators decided that the attack had not been serious and there was not enough danger to notify other students.