East Los Reales Road
August 17, 3:14 p.m.
A man suspected of a horrific sex crime—plus public genital exposure and criminal damage—provided an improbable (and odd) explanation when apprehended, claiming he'd been framed, according to a Pima County Sheriff's Department report.
A woman told law enforcement she'd been driving to work at a Circle K store in far-southeast Tucson when a shirtless male started throwing sizeable rocks from the roadside, denting her car twice, then scuttled into the bushes.
En route to the store—where seven Tucson Police Department units were already on scene—sheriff's deputies got another call regarding the same male ripping off someone's license plate and exposing himself to strangers.
The reportee said the Circle K had been having "ongoing issues" with the man, whom she said occupied a tent in the desert nearby and apparently had "a weird obsession of staring at (teenage) girls." She believed him a drug user responsible for a recent reported rape of an area 16-year-old female
Deputies found the male (who indeed resided in a proximate tent) the next day. Put in the back of a patrol vehicle, he repeatedly denied being a "pedophile" for 10 minutes.
He said that if DNA evidence in a TPD investigation regarding the rape pointed to him, he'd been "set up": Someone had recently stolen "a sex toy he had created"—which "could have his semen on it"—and (somehow) used the semen to frame him.
He went on to say people had been stealing his property from his mother's house, and that "some of his sandals had pieces of it carved out and leather was professionally stitched onto a different pair of sandals that he has, but he did not know who was doing it."
Deputies actually found the subject's "manmade sex toy" at his campsite, as well as "dirty magazines" and several bras, one decorated with butterflies, which he said he needed to return to a "friend."
After TPD questioning regarding the rape, the man was taken to jail, where during booking the number 17 randomly came up, and he muttered, "Seventeen, barely legal." His property—including the "sex toy" and $11.85 in change—were confiscated.
