Teen to Be Tried as Adult in Series of Sexual Assaults

A Newbury Park teenager described by prosecutors as a dangerous sexual predator was ordered to stand trial as an adult Tuesday for allegedly raping a college student and attacking four other victims last fall.

Chad Schmidt, who was 17 at the time of the assaults, stared blankly across the courtroom as Judge Charles R. McGrath handed down his ruling.

“He terrorized the victims; he used threats of death,” McGrath said. “I find you not to be amenable to the treatment program of the juvenile courts.”

The judge ordered the teenager held on $250,000 bail, and set an arraignment for Thursday on 21 charges of rape, battery and sexual assault. Schmidt’s mother cried softly as deputies led her son away.

Schmidt, 18, is accused of terrorizing his Newbury Park neighborhood for several weeks last year, ranging from attacking a jogger on his dirt bike to the rape of a woman in a bathroom at Newbury Park High School.

The teenager allegedly sought out victims in a bold and violent manner that escalated with each attack, authorities said. All of the assaults occurred in public areas with other people nearby.

Because of the seriousness of the alleged crimes, prosecutors sought to have Schmidt tried as an adult.

But the teen’s defense attorney--who acknowledged that Schmidt committed some but not all of the offenses--urged McGrath to allow his young client to stay in the juvenile court system where he could be treated.

“I think the evidence is pretty clear,” Deputy Public Defender James Harmon said, “that as he sits here today, having committed these acts, he is a danger to the community.”

The juvenile justice system allows youthful offenders a chance to be treated through a variety of specialized programs, Harmon said.

Schmidt--an above-average student at Newbury Park High who earned his degree from jail this year--could be rehabilitated, Harmon argued.

“This minor, Chad Schmidt, can respond to this treatment,” he said. “We are not judging crimes. We are judging children.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Lisa Frawley told McGrath that it was unlikely that Schmidt could be rehabilitated.

And she argued that because of the seriousness of the alleged crimes, the teenager was unfit for the juvenile system.

“What we are talking about is someone who sexually assaults people,” Frawley said. “There is nothing in his history to indicate he is a normal youth.”

The attacks Schmidt is accused of committing all occurred between Sept. 3 and Nov. 5, 1996. Each occurred within a quarter-mile-wide area of Newbury Park.

They all involved a young assailant, described by victims and witnesses as between 16 and 20, who wore a ski mask and rode a small chrome dirt bike, authorities said.

In addition, the victims all identified their attacker by his “strikingly” blue eyes, according to court testimony.

Schmidt was arrested by authorities who said he matched a composite drawing of the assailant. He was later picked out of a police lineup.

Among the crimes charged, Schmidt is accused of following a young woman on Sept. 3 to a shopping center at the corner of Reino and Orchard roads, where he allegedly grabbed and pinned her to the wall of an abandoned building. She screamed for help and the suspect ran off.

A week later, authorities say, he followed and attacked a jogger running at night near Borchard Park. Police said the assailant was scared away when the woman yelled.

The third attack occurred three nights later when a jogger was tackled into the bushes along Reino Road by the masked assailant. The attacker began to molest her but was scared away by the headlights of an approaching car.

On Oct. 26, a 14-year-old boy attending Saturday classes at Newbury Park High was sexually assaulted during a recess. The boy was talking on a pay phone when he was grabbed from behind and thrown to the ground where the attacker attempted to sodomize him.

The boy was able to scare away the attacker by warning him that class was about to start and school officials would notice him missing.

The last attack came on Nov. 5 when a college student taking night classes at Newbury Park High was raped in the school bathroom at knifepoint.

According to a detective who testified at the beginning of Schmidt’s fitness hearing, the woman came out of a bathroom stall to face a man in a ski mask who said: “Be quiet or I’ll kill you.”

The attacker threatened her and then sexually assaulted her inside the stall, the officer said.

In her closing argument, Frawley argued that the escalation of the crimes showed that the attacker was becoming more bold and calculating with each attack.

“He was out of control,” Frawley said. “This is well-entrenched criminal behavior.”