Crime & Safety
Man Convicted In Series Of Valley Sexual Assaults To Learn Fate
Court records show that the man was investigated by the sheriff's Palm Desert station for a sexual assault, among others.
INDIO, CA — A 48-year-old Indio man is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday after being convicted of three counts of sexual battery in connection with a series of Coachella Valley sexual assaults.
Daniel Candelario Delgadillo pled guilty to the crimes in October stemming from three sexual assaults, two in 2006 and one in 2014.
He was originally charged by the Riverside County District Attorney's Office with 16 felony charges, including rape, kidnapping, assault and false imprisonment.
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Delgadillo was initially charged a decade ago with the two 2006 rapes, but the charges were dismissed in June 2008. According to the criminal complaint, the attacks occurred about five months apart and a knife was used in one of the assaults.
In the 2014 case, prosecutors said Delgadillo sexually assaulted a woman, then drove her up a mountainside, where she leapt from Delgadillo's moving vehicle because she believed he "was taking her up the mountain to kill her," according to an arrest warrant declaration.
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According to the document, Delgadillo initially gave the woman a ride from a Palm Springs bus stop to a residence in either Palm Desert or Rancho Mirage, then sexually assaulted, punched and choked her before the drive up the mountain. Though a suspect description was provided to investigators, the house where the alleged assault occurred could not be located at the time, the declaration states.
For unknown reasons, the victim's sexual assault kit was also not analyzed for more than a year after the alleged assault occurred, but DNA results received in March 2016 linked Delgadillo to the crime, according to the declaration. He was arrested in September 2018 in the Whitewater area.
Court documents state that while authorities investigated the 2014 attack, Delgadillo was linked to four other sexual assaults across the Coachella Valley, including cases investigated by the Indio, Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs police departments and the sheriff's Palm Desert station.
— By City News Service
