DNA Breaks Year-old Rape Case
Santa Barbara – As reported here in June of 2012, a 21 year-old UCSB coed, following a night of partying at Santa Barbara’s popular Tonic Nightclub, was so drunk that club management asked her to leave the premises.
Peter Lino Parra
When the woman—whose friends called for another acquaintance to come pick her up to drive her home—was waiting outside the club on a bench waiting for her ride, she was approached by a male suspect who offered to drive her home. She accepted the offer and entered a vehicle driven by another male, and both men took her to an a downtown area Santa Barbara residence where she was reportedly raped by both men. She was then transported by car to the UCSB campus community of Isla Vista and returned to her residence.
According to Santa Barbara Police Department Public Information Officer Sgt. Riley Harwood, on June 8, 2012, the female victim went to Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital where she initiated a call to SBPD to report the rape.
Pursuant to that report and her medical exam, evidence collected during that exam was forwarded to the California Department of Justice Crime Lab for analysis. Exhaustive investigation by the SBPD Crimes Against Persons Unit ensued, but, as noted by Harwood to the media, “the case was placed on inactive status, unsolved, pending any results from the DOJ Crime Lab.”
Fully eleven months later, the SBPD was alerted by the Crime Lab that a “foreign DNA sample” had been discovered among the medical evidence collected by Cottage Hospital staff back on June 8th. A match of that newly-found sample was made to the DNA profile of an individual of record in the Combined DNA Index System, one Peter Lino Parra, 35.
With that evidence in hand, a felony arrest warrant for Parra was obtained on May 14th, and he was taken into custody at his Santa Barbara residence. Once he was informed of the DNA match, according to Harwood, “Parra acknowledged that he had been with the victim at the time of the incident and admitted to having sex with her.” Parra was arrested on charges of raping a victim too intoxicated to resist, and was booked into Santa Barbara County Jail with bail set at $100,000.
Photo: Courtesy Santa Barbara County Jail Booking
Read more:
Santa Barbara Independent: DNA Leads to Arrest in 2012 Rape Case
KSBY: Police Make Arrest in Rape Case Nearly One Year Old
