Photo: Edgar Rodriguez Ruelas
Ventura County – As reported here on March 8, 2020, Woodland Hills resident Edgar Rodriguez Ruelas was arrested on March 6th for what Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Dan Hawes reported as “the attempted kidnapping of a teenage girl” from a public park in Thousand Oaks just a day earlier.
When his victim managed to escape uninjured from Ruelas’ grasp, he immediately fled the scene and was subsequently located and arrested at the Torrey Pines State Preserve in San Diego. He was then transported to Ventura County Jail where he was booked on a charge of attempted kidnapping, with his bail originally set at $100,000.
According to Hawes, while Ruelas remained in custody, “detectives continued their investigation” of Ruelas’ recent activities, as he “matched the suspect description in similar previous crimes on hiking trails and residential burglaries where a sexual assault had occurred.” Incarcerated at VCJ, a search warrant was served upon him requiring him to provide detectives with a DNA sample for analysis by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Forensic Services Bureau.
That analysis, reported to detectives on March 16th, indicated that Ruelas’ DNA was a perfect match for that found “at the scene of a burglary and sexual assault that occurred in 2017.” With that evidence in hand, detectives then arrested Ruelas—still sitting in jail—and charged him with assault with the intent to commit a sexual assault.
Considering the totality of the evidence now in Ruelas’ file, the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office amended the original charges to include one count of forcible act of sexual penetration in the commission of a first degree residential burglary, with his bail now set at $500,000.
Photo: Courtesy Ventura County Jail Booking
