Guilty Plea Entered in School Rape

After professing his innocence for 2 1/2 years, a former Newbury Park High School student admitted Tuesday to raping a woman at knifepoint in a campus bathroom and attacking four other victims near the school in late 1996.

Chad Lawrence Schmidt was 17 at the time, but was to be prosecuted as an adult because of the seriousness of the crimes. He had previously pleaded not guilty to 22 felony and misdemeanor charges.

But facing a possible life prison sentence, Schmidt walked into court Tuesday and pleaded guilty to 12 felonies, including rape, sexual battery and assault with intent to commit rape and sodomy.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lisa West said she was surprised and relieved by the defendant’s change of plea.

West said she had already subpoenaed 200 witnesses for Schmidt’s trial, which was expected to last two months.

“I thought this one was going to go to trial for sure,” she said.

Deputy Public Defender Robert Willey could not be reached for comment.

Schmidt now faces up to 21 years in state prison, and will be required to register as a sex offender when released.

The requirement is significant because failing to register would constitute a third strike, which could send Schmidt back to prison for life, West said.

After Schmidt admitted to the felonies in Ventura County Superior Court, prosecutors agreed to drop the remaining 10 misdemeanor charges. They also dropped four allegations that could have enhanced his prison term if he was convicted by a jury.

Schmidt’s case was deemed one of the most serious currently being handled by the district attorney’s office because of the increasingly violent manner in which the crimes were carried out, prosecutors said.

The attacks, which took place between Sept. 3 and Nov. 5, 1996, all occurred in public places within a quarter-mile of Schmidt’s home. Two happened on the high school campus and the others in or near Borchard Park.

Victims described their assailant as a young man with “strikingly” blue eyes who wore a hooded sweatshirt and ski mask. Schmidt, who has blue eyes, was picked out of a police lineup and arrested after police circulated a composite drawing.

The first attack occurred behind a shopping center at Reino Road. An assailant grabbed a woman and pinned her to the wall of an abandoned building. She screamed and he ran off.

A week later, authorities say, a jogger was attacked while running at night near Borchard Park. The assailant was scared away when the woman yelled.

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

Schmidt admitted Tuesday to being the masked attacker in each of those attacks. He pleaded guilty to three separate charges of assault with intent to commit rape.

On Oct. 26, 1996, 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. The attacker attempted to sodomize him.

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

Schmidt pleaded guilty to five charges stemming from that incident, including false imprisonment, attempted robbery, sexual battery and two counts of assault with intent to sodomize.

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

According to a detective who testified at Schmidt’s juvenile fitness hearing in February 1997, the woman came out of a bathroom stall and encountered a man in a ski mask who said: “Be quiet or I’ll kill you.”

The attacker then sexually assaulted and raped her inside a bathroom stall, the officer said.

Schmidt pleaded guilty to four charges in the bathroom attack: rape, sexual battery by restraint, forced oral copulation and false imprisonment.

Schmidt has been in custody since his arrest in November 1996. He missed his senior year of high school, but completed his course work from a juvenile facility.

His sentencing hearing is set for June 23.