On June 17, 2007, a Duluth woman was raped as she and her 2-year-old daughter waited for a ride to church. The woman was pregnant. The attack induced labor.
For years there were no suspects, but 2014 brought a DNA match and an arrest — Daniel Torrijos. He was extradited from Indiana to Gwinnett County, put in jail, indicted and is awaiting trial.
Last month, the woman got a phone call authorities say included a bribe to change her story. It set in motion four weeks of monitored calls, careful planning and “TV police stuff.” A plan was put in place to lure her alleged rapist’s brother — an attorney from Mexico — to Gwinnett.
“This was an attack on the whole system,” Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said Wednesday. “Any prosecutor, and me especially, will take it seriously and move quickly to try and do something about it.”
Representatives from Porter’s office and the Gwinnett County police drug team took Hernan Torrijos-Carapia into custody Tuesday outside the food court at the Mall of Georgia in Buford. He was indicted Wednesday on a single count of influencing a witness and is being held at the Gwinnett County jail without bond.
Authorities believe Torrijos-Carapia, his brother and a third man in Illinois orchestrated an attempt to convince the woman to change her story.
Porter said the victim contacted authorities about a month ago after receiving the initial phone call from Torrijos-Carapia, who identified himself as her alleged assailant’s brother and asked her to drop the charges. Police began listening in on her phone calls and the jailhouse communications of Daniel Torrijos.
“Their conversations were pretty clear that they were going to pay her money to change her story about what happened, and tell authorities that she had been in a consensual relationship with Daniel,” Porter said.
Torrijos-Carapia initially offered her $20,000, Porter said. Later, he offered $30,000.
Local authorities wanted to pursue, but Porter didn’t think they’d be able to extradite Torrijos-Carapia on an influencing witness charge, he said. So they devised a way to convince him to come to Gwinnett.
Torrijos-Carapia offered to wire the money but, under the guidance of authorities, the woman told him she wasn’t comfortable with that — cash only. Torrijos-Carapia flew to the United States on Sunday and visited a girlfriend in Chicago before making his way to Georgia, Porter said.
After a few last-minute changes and a little scrambling, Torrijos-Carapia was set up to meet a “cousin” of the victim at the Mall of Georgia on Tuesday night. He met authorities instead, and later made a statement that was “essentially an admission” of guilt, Porter said.
All three men — Daniel Torrijos, Hernan Torrijos-Carapia and the facilitator in Illinois, who was not yet in custody — were indicted Wednesday on single counts of influencing a witness. Torrijos was also indicted on rape, burglary and false imprisonment charges.
Porter said authorities acted with urgency in part because of worries about the suspects’ possible “Plan B”: to make the victim “disappear.”
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