A 19-year-old Faribault man is charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct after allegedly sexually assaulting a teen girl he met at the Mall of America, then holding her at his apartment, strangling her repeatedly and threatening to kill her.
The charges were filed Friday in Rice County District Court.
Rodrigo Raul Deluna Jr. faces five counts: first-degree criminal sexual conduct involving penetration of a victim under 18 with injury and coercion, felony domestic assault by strangulation, felony threats of violence, gross misdemeanor contributing to the delinquency of a child and gross misdemeanor furnishing alcohol to a person under 21.
According to the criminal complaint, Faribault police received a call from the Chaska Police Department around 5:30 p.m. Thursday about a juvenile runaway. Officers had tracked the girl’s location through Snapchat to an address on 3rd Street NW in Faribault.
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Officers went to the address and made contact with Deluna, who is described in the complaint as “well known” to law enforcement. He confirmed the girl was at the residence. She came downstairs and officers told her she would be leaving with them.
While being transported to the police department, the girl told officers she had met Deluna at the Mall of America a couple of days earlier. She was going to go home that morning, but Deluna told her if she didn’t do things with him, he would “get mad,” the court documents alleged. She also said Deluna had choked her with his hand.
In an interview at the police department, the girl described meeting Deluna for the first time at the mall while she was there with friends. She said Deluna asked for her phone number and began texting her to meet up. When her friends left the mall, Deluna told her she didn’t need to call her mom and could instead hang out with him and his friends, according to court records.
The group went to Dave and Busters, where they told the girl they would bring her home since she lived nearby. After leaving, the group dropped off another person but did not take the girl home. She was instead brought to Faribault, and the two went into Deluna’s apartment around 1 a.m., the complaint states.
The girl told officers that Deluna got on top of her, grabbed her neck and began kissing her. She said he asked her to have sex and she told him no. He told her not to be scared and proceeded to sexually assault her. She told officers it was painful and that she told him to stop, but Deluna would not. She said he would repeatedly grab her neck, push her down in the bed and choke her, according to court records.
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When asked how many times the assaults occurred, the girl said “it was too many,” telling officers it happened about twice the day before and once on Thursday. She said she did not consent and officers observed two marks on her neck, which the girl said were from Deluna.
The girl told officers that after each assault, Deluna forced her to shower with him. While in the shower, he told her he would drown her. He also told her that if she wouldn’t shower with him, he would kill her and nobody would know, the complaint says.
At one point, the girl told Deluna she wanted to go home and he said that since she came home with him, she was “not going home at all,” the complaint alleges. The victim also said Deluna wouldn’t let her go to the bathroom with her phone.
Before officers arrived, Deluna told the girl he wasn’t “doing this again” and he was getting angry at her. He told her he had “gone through a missing juvenile before,” the complaint says.
Records show Deluna has a pending case in Rice County, charged with domestic assault against a different juvenile victim who was reported missing.
The girl told officers Deluna knew she was a runaway because she told him, and he overheard her on the phone with her mother. She also took a call on speaker phone with a friend who said police were at her home. On the way to the hospital for a forensic exam, the girl told an officer that Deluna had provided her with marijuana and alcohol.
Court records show Deluna is currently on pretrial supervision with Rice County Community Corrections for multiple pending cases, including charges of domestic assault and violation of a domestic abuse no contact order involving two different juvenile females.
Deluna remains in custody at the Rice County Jail, with his first bail hearing set for April 6. The first-degree criminal sexual conduct charge carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $40,000 fine.
