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Bergenfield day laborer sentenced to 18½ years for Dumont, Englewood sex assaults

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A judge in Hackensack this morning sentenced a Bergenfield day laborer to 18½ years in prison for sexually assaulting three women in Dumont and one in Englewood in a series of street incidents that set a community on edge.

Photo Credit: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
Photo Credit: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter

“I regret that all this happened,” 23-year-old Alexis Sanchez-Medina said before the judge sentenced him. “I’m sorry all these people have to suffer through all these consequences. In life you make a lot of mistakes, and if you could just turn back the hands of time you could change those.

“That can’t be done, and we have to face the consequences.”

One of the four victims — all of whom testified during the trial — told Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Roma this morning that the incident “greatly affected” her life.

“I have had trouble sleeping. I have had nightmares, and I have permanently removed my air conditioner to prevent a similar incident,” she said. “I’ve had flashbacks of the attack that make me feel sick to my stomach to the point of vomiting.

“People like this man should not be able to commit these crimes and get away with it.”

Alexis Sanchez-Medina, defense attorney Gail Hargrove (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Kristin DeMarco said the other three “didn’t want to be in the same room with their attacker” spoke to her of emotional fragility and fear that they still feel.

“They will have a lot of emotional trauma and fears to come, because of what this defendant did,” DeMarco said.

Sanchez-Medina “terrorized the communities of Englewood, Dumont, and Bergenfield” in July and August 2012, the prosecutor said. “It’s the epitome of a stranger down a dark alley jumping out to rape a victim.”

He must serve more than 13½ years before he will be eligible for parole. Once that term ends, he will be deported, said Roma, the judge.

“There are crimes, and there are despicable crimes,” Roma said.

“I remember the tearful expressions on their faces,” he said. “These women have suffered major difficulties . They fear being alone, walking at night.

“There will be consecutive sentences because these are four separate victims,” Roma added. It would be an insult to each of the victims to say that this is one aberrant behavior. What we have are four separate incidents, and to say otherwise would be an insult to victims everywhere.

“Imagine walking down the street, being circled by a man on a bicycle, having him throw you down and touch your private parts – women, in one case a woman walking with a child,” the judge said. “It is even more reprehensible it was done while the mother was holding her child’s hand .

“There has to be a way of penalizing this type of behavior.”

An undocumented Honduran immigrant, Sanchez-Medina was familiar with the area where the women were attacked, said DeMarco, the prosecutor.

A young Englewood mother testified during the trial that she was walking in town with her 3-year-old son one night when she saw Sanchez-Medina sitting with other men outside a flower shop.

He got on a bicycle and “circled” her, blowing kisses and speaking in Spanish, she said.

He had “distinctive” features,the woman said, including curly hair, a pony tail and a particular shape to his eyes.

As he rode by, she told jurors, he smacked her and grabbed her buttocks.

The frightened woman said she told her little boy: “Whatever happens, just run.”

Coming around for another pass, Sanchez-Medina knocked her down before taking off on the bicycle, the woman said.

She told jurors she later saw a TV report about women being attacked, so she contacted police. Then she picked Sanchez-Medina from a photo lineup.

“I saw in my mind what he looked like, the man who attacked me,” she testified.

The man in the photo didn’t have a ponytail, she said, but she told police: “That’s him. I am 100% sure.”

The woman who spoke today testified during the trial that she noticed someone had moved the accordion panels on the air conditioner of her ground-level apartment. When she looked out the window,” she said, she saw “someone with curly hair and a pony tail.”

The next night, the woman told jurors, she went to investigate. That’s when someone grabbed her from behind, forced her to the ground and put his hand down her pants, touching her genitals, she said.

The final attack, fitting a pattern of escalating seriousness, was in Dumont, where a woman taking out her garbage at night was attacked by a man who put his fingers inside her before running into the shadows.

“He has an athletic build, strong, curly wavy hair — all completely similar descriptions, nearly exact in the attacks on these women,” DeMarco told jurors.

Jurors in November convicted Sanchez-Medina of sexual assault, criminal sexual contact and four other counts following a one-week trial. They acquitted him of two major charges of second-degree attempted sexual assault and attempted sexual penetration.

Testifying in his own behalf, Sanchez-Medina insisted during the trial that authorities got the wrong man, and that he confessed after being picked up the night of the spree only so he could go to work.

Today, defense attorney Gail Hargrove she said that her client has “lived a circumscribed life” of work and limited social interaction of running and sharing most meals with friends. He moved to the U.S. for a better life, she said, by “working and sending money to his mother in Honduras” who has medical problems.

Prison will be a hardship on his family, Hargrove said.

“His family writes him, constantly calls to see how he’s doing,” she said. “I vouch for him as a person who will essentially live past this conviction, with the hope the victims will live past these incidents.”

 

 

STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter

 

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