October 7, 2020 – Santa Barbara County, Ca.
Perhaps subscribing to the principles of “go big or go home,” when 27-year-old Santa Barbara resident Fidel Lorenzana Lopez made the decision to show a hapless female the extent of his amorous intent, he committed no fewer than eight felonies along with a pair of serious misdemeanors.
According to Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Raquel Zick, it all went down in the early evening hours of September 29th on a busy commercial thoroughfare in the City of Goleta when deputies responded to a 911 Emergency call reporting “a sexual assault that had just occurred.”
When uniformed patrol deputies showed up on the scene, the learned that the reporting party had heard a woman screaming and then found her “partially clothed” and running toward a business seeking a place of escape from her attacker. The victim was contacted and treated by on-scene medical personnel for what Zick described as “serious injuries.”
The immediately ensuing investigation indicated that the attacker had departed from the area behind the wheel of “a silver-colored Volkswagen Beetle.” With such a unique identifier in hand, law enforcement units flooded the surrounding area.
It took the cops only “27 minutes” to locate the suspect vehicle and “another five minutes” to find Lopez nearby. He was taken into custody and transported to Santa Barbara County Jail, where he was booked on charges of attempted murder, assault with intent to commit rape, assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, false imprisonment, sexual battery, terrorist threats, robbery, dissuading a witness, giving false information to a peace officer, and battery.
With all that going for him, Lopez remains in custody with his bail set at $1,000,000.
Photo: Courtesy Santa Barbara County Jail Booking
