Suspect in 3 Attacks Arrested After Woman Fends Him Off

A Garden Grove man who allegedly assaulted three women in three cities within 13 hours was arrested Sunday night, moments after his last victim successfully fended off an attack.

All three women identified Rafael R. Ceballos, 33, as their attacker, police said.

Huntington Beach Police Lt. Jack Reinholtz said Ceballos was arrested on suspicion of armed robbery, auto theft and assault with a deadly weapon, but will probably face additional charges stemming from earlier attacks Sunday in Garden Grove and Westminster.

In the first of the three assaults, a 33-year-old Garden Grove woman was raped, cut with a knife and robbed by a man who demanded money from her as she arrived at work in Westminster at 6:45 a.m., Westminster police Lt. Andrew Hall said.

The woman, a resident of Garden Grove, parked her car about 6:45 a.m. in the parking lot of a shopping area at the southwest corner of Magnolia Street and Westminster Avenue. A man approached her wielding a knife and demanded money. When she tried to push him away, she suffered serious cuts on her hand and fingers and needed 22 stitches at a local hospital, police said.

About 7:10 p.m. Sunday, Ceballos allegedly made his second attack, in Garden Grove, on a 54-year-old woman getting into her car outside a Target store at Brookhurst Street and Westminster Avenue.

The knife-wielding man forced her into her car and started to drive away, but she leaped out, said Garden Grove Police Lt. John Woods. Ceballos allegedly continued west on Westminster Avenue.

About 40 minutes later, in Huntington Beach, Ceballos was arrested after allegedly trying to assault a woman who had just entered her car after shopping at a Sav-On drug store at Sher and Edinger avenues, Reinholtz said.

Holding a knife in one hand, Ceballos tried to open the woman’s car door with the other, but the doors were locked, Reinholtz said. The woman threw the car into gear and drove to a nearby pay phone, where she called police.

A Huntington Beach officer, recognizing the stolen car from a police radio broadcast about the Garden Grove attack, stopped Ceballos about three-quarters of a mile away, Reinholtz said. The Garden Grove woman’s purse was inside the car, he said.