Man found guilty of trying to rape woman cleaning Irvine office in attack caught on camera
A man charged in the attempted sexual assault of a woman who was cleaning an office building in Irvine three years ago was found guilty of five criminal counts Monday.
Eduardo Gonzalez-Godoy admitted he was the man seen pointing a pellet gun that closely resembled a Glock 19 pistol at the victim while she was working overnight and trying to rape her about 1:20 a.m. on Feb. 6, 2019.
He was arrested the following day and subsequently charged with a misdemeanor count of brandishing a replica firearm and felony allegations of making criminal threats, second-degree burglary, assault with intent to commit rape and kidnapping to commit a sex offense.
Jurors spent about six hours in deliberation before finding Gonzalez-Godoy guilty of all charges. He is scheduled to appear at a sentencing hearing Jan. 27. The crimes he was convicted of typically carry a sentence of at least seven years to life in prison, Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey Boyd said.
The defendant took the witness stand Thursday and said he intended to have sex with a woman when he left his home on the day of the attack, whether or not it was consensual. He initially went to a medical complex on the same street as the office and was seen peering into its windows, according to a woman who testified that she was working alone inside the facility at the time.
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Gonzalez-Godoy then made his way to the office on the 17800 block of Von Karman Avenue, where a woman identified only as Jane Doe during court proceedings was vacuuming. He said he searched the area to make sure she was alone before approaching her and propositioning her for sex.
He drew the pellet gun from his waistband when she refused and told him she was calling for help. They went on to struggle for control of the replica weapon for about five minutes.
“He said, ‘You’re not calling no one. You’re alone. You’re lost,’” the woman testified last week through a court-appointed Spanish interpreter.
“I started pleading to him, ‘I have two small children who need me.’ He told me he didn’t care,” the woman said.
They wound up in a side room of the office and tripped over a piece of furniture. The victim managed to take what she believed at the time to be a real firearm away from him, then ran to another building to find her co-workers.
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The left sleeve of her top had been torn, and she kept her hands tightly clasped around the replica firearm until her colleague managed to help her calm down and relinquish her grip, she said.
The woman suffered a torn muscle in her shoulder, bruising to her arms and abrasions to her face during the altercation.
During trial, the defendant and his attorney, Randall Bethune, did not deny that he committed the attempted sexual assault. However, they claimed that no kidnapping took place, according to the legal definition of the term.
They argued that he did not specifically intend to bring the victim into the room where she eventually managed to take the pellet gun, and that their specific location in the business was not relevant to her risk of harm.
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