We could just be warped by pounding these out every week.
Yet, the sentence a man received for assaulting a female jogger while brandishing an imitation firearm seems light.
To us.
As for the possible sentence hanging over the head of a woman who allegedly made children perform lewd acts in front of her?
That one sounds perfect.
(If the sick accusations are true.)
Sean Luke Salaber was sentenced last week to four years in county jail for tackling a female jogger from behind, putting an imitation gun to her head and groping her until she screamed and fought him off. A jury had found the 23-year-old National Guardsman from Riverside guilty on Sept. 7 of one felony count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud, or deceit, one misdemeanor count of brandishing an imitation firearm, one misdemeanor count of assault, and one misdemeanor count of battery. The attack happened around 6:40 p.m. Sept. 24, 2015, on a trail near Aliso and Wood Canyons Regional Park in Laguna Niguel, where bystanders heard the victim's screams and Salaber was arrested by sheriff's deputies a short distance away, in a residential neighborhood near Kite Hill Drive and Becard Drive. The Orange County District Attorney's office provided some of the victim's emotional impact statement to the court before sentencing: “He underestimated me. He saw a lean 5-foot-7 woman and he saw someone he could dominate. Think again. I outwitted him at his own game. I felt his gun pressed against my head, and without a weapon, I fearlessly fought back anyway. I out-screamed him when he tried to cover my mouth. I drew the attention of the witnesses by refusing to believe that this was my fate. And better yet, I refused to buy into the idea that he wins today or ever. He chose the wrong girl . I will continue to use my strength to fight against evil like him.”
Brandi Alma Valadez was charged last week with sexually assaulting a little boy and making him and a little girl perform lewd acts in front of the 40-year-old. Conviction on two felony counts of lewd acts on a child under 14, two felony counts of forcible lewd acts on a child under 14, and two felony counts of child abuse, with a sentencing enhancement for multiple victims, could send Valadez to state prison for 30 years to life, according to the OCDA. Prosecutors say Valdez knew the children and was in a position of trust. (The identities and relationships of minor victims to alleged sexual assaulters and each other are withheld to protect them.) Aware the boy, who was under the age of 13 at the time, was committing lewd acts with the girl, who was under age 10, in Valadez's residence prompted the adult to force the children to engage in those acts in front of her during the summer of 2014, according to the OCDA. She is being prosecuted under the legal theory that she aided and abetted the sexual assault by not stopping it from happening, according to the OCDA, which adds the adult is also accused of sexually assaulting the boy. The woman is also alleged to have inflicted “unjustifiable physical pain and mental suffering on the children,” and of threatening the boy with a hot bath that would scald him if he did not sexually assault the girl, the OCDA says. Valadez, who is being held on $1 million bail, has a continued arraignment hearing set for Nov. 4 at Central Jail in Santa Ana.
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.