Matthew Ormseth and Richard Winton
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES Fourteen years ago, police in Redondo Beach were called to a hospital where a woman had come after waking up in a stranger’s bed, naked and with no memory of what had happened. She believed she had been raped.
An examination confirmed she’d had sex with a man. Police uploaded his DNA profile to a law enforcement database and, a few years later, it matched to a name: Paul Ruben Flores.
Redondo detectives opened a rape investigation into Flores. Although he was not charged in the case, the DNA hit sounded alarms 200 miles north in San Luis Obispo, where Flores was the prime suspect in the enduring mystery of Kristin Smart’s disappearance and presumed death.
Deanna Cantrell never thought she d be a police officer, let alone a police chief. I did not like police growing up, the Fairfield police chief told the Bay Area Reporter. I grew up underprivileged in New Mexico, in a household with a lot of violence, so police came quite a few times and I didn t care for them. So, if you ask anyone who knew me then, nobody would have thought that d be my path.
But Cantrell, a 50-year-old lesbian, became the first woman and the first LGBTQ person in her position last October. She said her feelings toward the police began to change after a chance encounter with a stranger at a party decades ago.
Paul Flores moved to LA after Kristin Smart vanished. New sexual assault claims followed
Matthew Ormseth and Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times
April 28, 2021
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This photo provided by the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff s Office shows suspect Paul Flores who was taken into custody in the San Pedro area of Los Angeles on Tuesday, April 13, 2021, for the murder of Kristin Smart. Flores, the longtime suspect in the 25-year-old disappearance of the California college student was arrested Tuesday, on suspicion of murder, and his father was booked in jail as an accessory to the crime. Flores, 44, who was the last person seen with Smart on the California Polytechnic State University campus in San Luis Obispo before she vanished in 1996, was taken into custody in the Los Angeles area. (San Luis Obispo County Sheriff s Office via AP)AP
Deanna Cantrell never thought she d be a police officer, let alone a police chief. I did not like police growing up, the Fairfield police chief told the Bay Area Reporter. I grew up underprivileged in New Mexico, in a household with a lot of violence, so police came quite a few times and I didn t care for them. So, if you ask anyone who knew me then, nobody would have thought that d be my path.
But Cantrell, a 50-year-old lesbian, became the first woman and the first LGBTQ person in her position last October. She said her feelings toward the police began to change after a chance encounter with a stranger at a party decades ago.
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif.
A former Uber driver in central California was sentenced Monday to 46 years to life in prison for sexually assaulting and stealing from passengers.
A jury convicted Alfonso Alarcon Nunez last month of 13 felonies, including three charges of rape.
Superior Court Judge Craig van Rooyen, who presided over the trial, also sentenced Alarcon Nunez to an additional eight years and eight months, which must be served first.
He must serve all 54 years and 8 months, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reported.
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Alarcon Nunez, 40, of Santa Maria was accused of sexually assaulting or stealing from intoxicated women who had ordered rides or whom he had picked up in 2017 and 2018 in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.