Video Leads To Conviction, Sentencing Of Santa Anita Would-Be-Rapist

BALDWIN PARK, CA — Video evidence from the scene aided in the arrest and subsequent trial of Robert Andrew Rodriguez. The 51-year-old man was sentenced on Monday to 35-years to life in prison for breaking into a South El Monte home and threatening to rape and kill the residents inside.

Prosecutors said Rodriguez broke into the residence in the 2300 block of Santa Anita Avenue through the window of an unoccupied bedroom on the evening of Dec. 14, 2015.

He went upstairs, where he encountered the woman and ordered her to take off her clothes, threatening to kill her family otherwise, authorities said.
She yelled out to her husband for help and told her son to call the police. When her husband confronted Rodriguez, the intruder ran, according to Deputy District Attorney Kelsey McKeever-Unger.

The encounter was captured on home video and Rodriguez was arrested the next day.

Rodriguez was convicted in December of first-degree burglary with a person present and making criminal threats, both felonies.

A jury deadlocked on two additional charges alleging that Rodriguez posed as an FBI agent investigating a bomb threat and tried to rape the woman who lived at the home.

Rodriguez has two prior convictions for assault with a deadly weapon and willfully infliction of injury, as well as three drug-related convictions, and has been behind bars since his arrest.

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