MTA Driver Is Suspected of Other Attacks

An MTA bus driver charged with molesting a boy on his bus is a convicted felon who reportedly confessed to abusing other boys he met on his route, records show.

Anthony Zaragoza, the 325-pound driver, is charged with molesting a 15-year-old North Carolina boy who in June rode the bus from Pasadena to go sightseeing in Hollywood.

Zaragoza, 48, of Quartz Hill faces up to 13 years in state prison if convicted on the charges of lewd conduct with a minor, attempted forced oral copulation and false imprisonment.

The boy captured what prosecutors say is Zaragoza’s voice on a video camcorder.

Two decades ago, Zaragoza was convicted of felony robbery. This would not have automatically prevented the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from hiring him, but MTA officials said that because his criminal record had been expunged in 1989 they could not consider his past problems with the law.

Zaragoza is the fourth MTA bus driver in four years to be charged with a sex crime involving a passenger. Leonard Howell was sentenced in June to eight years in prison for sexually assaulting a passenger in Pomona. A decade earlier, a woman alleged that Howell raped her and was awarded $650,000 by a jury.

Allegations such as those against Zaragoza are relatively rare given that the MTA has 4,000 drivers and that passengers made more than a billion trips in the last three years, said MTA spokesman Ed Scannell.

In Zaragoza’s case, the North Carolina boy may not be his only alleged victim, and police are searching for others, authorities said. “We understand he was active in numerous community organizations and he was apparently in positions of trust, and there may be victims out there who are bus riders and some who aren’t,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Christina S. Weiss.

Zaragoza confessed to molesting the boy and others while driving his bus, according to a Los Angeles Police Department detective’s affidavit for a search warrant seeking MTA records on the driver.

In a transcript of Zaragoza’s interrogation by detectives that was attached to the affidavit, Zaragoza initially denied the allegations but later admitted touching boys “two or three times,” calling it a “sporadic thing.”

Zaragoza has pleaded not guilty and is being held on $500,000 bail. A father of three, he was active as a Little League coach, a football coach and a Big Brother, often mentoring students, according to authorities.

During a recent preliminary hearing, the North Carolina boy, who had been visiting his uncle in Pasadena, testified that he boarded the MTA bus at Los Robles Avenue and Colorado Boulevard.

Initially, Zaragoza offered safety tips and advised the boy what to see, the slightly built boy said. Zaragoza stopped the bus at Hawthorne Way in Hollywood and the two were alone, the boy testified.

When the talk turned to sex, the 15-year-old switched on the video camera he was holding. It was pointed at the floor but recorded their conversation, which was played at the preliminary hearing.

A voice, which police say is Zaragoza’s, is heard saying that the boy is a “good-looking kid, that’s why I like you. Beautiful eyes. You got a beautiful shape.”

Later, when the boy rebuffed his repeated advances, the voice replied: “I could pin you to the floor and take your pants off without you stopping me. But I wouldn’t hurt you, sweetheart.”

After Zaragoza allegedly fondled him, the boy escaped by promising to come back the next day. After Zaragoza let the boy off the bus, the youngster cursed to himself and, talking into the camera, said he would go to the police.

Two decades ago, Zaragoza was convicted of felony robbery for a crime committed in La Habra and was sentenced by an Orange County judge to a year in jail and three years of probation.

Zaragoza in 1988 used a state law that allows defendants convicted of a felony and not given a state prison sentence the right to have their conviction reduced to a misdemeanor. He also succeeded in getting that conviction expunged from his record in January 1989.

The MTA’s predecessor, the Southern California Rapid Transit District, knew of his conviction when it hired him as a part-time driver in February 1989 because Zaragoza had told agency officials about his record.

But since the criminal record had been officially expunged, it technically didn’t exist, and state law forbade the agency to deny him employment because of it. He was hired as a full-time driver in October 1989.