Navy Man Arrested in Three Sex Attacks

A Navy recruit was arrested in connection with three sexual assaults over the weekend in Coronado, a scenic waterfront enclave of tidy, tree-shaded streets and very little violent crime, police said.

Airman recruit Cedric L. Tate, 20, of New York was taken into custody late Sunday night after an attack on a 17-year-old girl near her home, authorities said. Tate also was charged in two other attacks, including the rape of a 44-year-old woman Saturday.

In the final incident, police arrived after a neighbor heard screams and called 911. Another resident who ran outside discovered the victim was his daughter, who had been stuffed in her car’s trunk, then hauled out and beaten when the suspect couldn’t start the vehicle, said Coronado police spokeswoman Lea Corbin.

The two residents arrived just as police did, Corbin said.

Corbin said the suspect was “hovering” over the girl and told police he was drawn by the screams.

Tate had been assigned to the Naval Amphibious Base, one of two Navy bases in Coronado, since July 24 and was to begin training that could have led to his becoming a Navy SEAL, said Lt. Cmdr. Darryn James, a Navy spokesman. James said Tate arrived after training in Pensacola, Fla. Coronado police were comparing notes with Pensacola authorities on unsolved attacks there.

The first assault came at 3 a.m. Saturday when a 17-year-old girl was attacked at a bay-side marina and campground. As she was being beaten and dragged away, an off-duty San Diego police officer camping nearby heard screams and came to her aid, Corbin said. The assailant fled.

Forty-five minutes later, a 44-year-old woman was raped in the parking lot of the Hotel del Coronado, where she worked in the laundry, authorities said.

About 11 p.m. Sunday, a caller said a man was lurking behind a trash bin in a residential neighborhood. Police found no one but then were summoned to the third attack nearby. The three victims were treated and released from hospitals.

Violence is rare in Coronado, which sits near San Diego on a peninsula washed by a sailboat-specked bay on one side and the Pacific on the other. In summer, vacationers swell the population to 45,000, nearly twice that of winter. Its rate of violent crime is the lowest in San Diego County, less than a fifth of the per-capita rate for the city of San Diego.

Serious crime is not completely unknown, though. In 1993, a Navy ensign, apparently distraught over a romantic breakup, burst into officers quarters at the amphibious base and shot to death two fellow servicemen before killing himself.