UPDATE: White ended up pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with minor who is three years younger than a perpetrator—a felony. He served his time and did not have to register as a sex offender.
ORIGINAL STORY, MARCH 7, 2013: Chase Jeffrey White appears from the booking photo at right to be about 12 but, according to the Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA) he's 21, from Tustin and linked to the rape of a 17-year-old girl he did not know in a hometown park.
After a DNA database hit, White was charged with a felony count of rape in concert that could keep him in state prison until he's 30 and with a sex offender scarlet letter for life.
The girl was at Centennial Park in Tustin around 10 p.m. on Oct. 16 when she was approached by two males she did not know, according to an OCDA arraignment statement that alleges one of them had his buddy hold the teen while the man raped her. The pair is said to have later fled the park.
The girl contacted the Tustin Police Department, which collected a DNA sample and fed it into the local database, which on Feb. 19 indicated White was the rapist, according to the OCDA, which adds he was arrested on March 5.
White's friend, according to prosecutors, has since died. White was being held in lieu of $100,000 bail pending his scheduled arraignment today in Santa Ana.
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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.