An alleged pimp is due in court today for accusations he beat his 18-year-old girlfriend to get her into a car and burned her leg with a blow torch and threatened to kill her if she did not turn tricks for him at a Garden Grove hotel.
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Richard Jordan Sandoval, 24, is charged with two felony counts of assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury, two felony counts of domestic battery with corporal injury, one felony count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud, or deceit, one felony count of human trafficking, one felony count of pandering by promise, threat, or violence to become a prostitute, and one felony count of criminal threats.
Due in Westminster court today for a pretrial hearing, Sandoval faces up to 22 years and eight months in state prison with a conviction.
He was in a romantic relationship with the victim–or so she thought–on July 8, when he allegedly assaulted her physically and she tried to run away from him, according to a statement from the Orange County District Attorney's office. Sandoval is accused of following her in a vehicle and threatening her with violence if she did not get inside. After she got in, she was physically assaulted again, the OCDA claims.
The next day, the young woman was driven to Garden Grove hotel, where Sandoval allegedly beat her yet again, burned her leg with a blow torch and threatening to kill her if she did not engage in prostitution, the OCDA alleges.
But the Garden Grove Police Department was contacted during the woman's ordeal, and officers arrived at the hotel to arrest Sandoval, reads the prosecution statement, which adds he allegedly had scales, empty plastic bags, a large amount of cocaine and a blow torch inside his vehicle.
Deputy District Attorney Bryan Clavecilla has in his arsenal Proposition 35, the anti-human trafficking law 81 percent of California voters approved in November 2012. It increases the penalty for alleged human traffickers.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.