Child endangerment charges being explored for prosecutor who brought teen daughter onto San Jose trail and plotted to record man having inappropriate contact with her
By Robert Salonga
The Mercury News
November 17, 2019
SAN JOSE — A Santa Clara County prosecutor used his 13-year-old daughter to lure a man back to the spot where she said he had sexually molested her, so that the man’s incriminating actions could be recorded on video, according to police reports and sources familiar with the case.
The man has now been arrested, but the prosecutor is under scrutiny for possibly endangering his child.
The molestation was the subject of an active police investigation at the time that the prosecutor brought his daughter back to the scene, the Los Alamitos Trail in Almaden Valley. After recording video of the man interacting with his daughter, the prosecutor gave the recording to the police. The next day, 76-year-old Ali Mohammad Lajmiri was arrested and charged with lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14 and false imprisonment.
The prosecutor told police that he and the victim had arranged for her to walk back and forth on the trail, while the two of them stayed in touch with cell phones and earbuds.
“He stated that they had already done this several times,” San Jose Detective Sgt. Sean Pierce wrote in the police report on the case. “He directed (the victim) to let (the suspect) touch her if she encountered him, but if it was the breast or between the legs to move away. He instructed (the victim) to let (the suspect) identify and make the contact and if she cannot handle things she should move away. He instructed (the victim) to walk back and forth on the designated route and don’t interact with anyone for very long.”
The idea that a prosecutor would interfere in an active police investigation and have his daughter essentially serve as bait for a suspected predator was met with dismay by members of the local law enforcement community, including some of the prosecutor’s colleagues and police officers who have worked with him.
Multiple sources confirmed the prosecutor’s identity to this news organization. He is not being named in this story to protect the identity of the underage sexual assault victim.
The state Attorney General’s office has taken over the prosecution of the molestation case because of the conflicts of interest involved. Such conflicts already existed because of the prosecutor’s relationship to the victim, and became more pronounced after his efforts to insert himself into the case and gather evidence against the suspect.
Sources also told this news organization that state prosecutors are exploring potential child endangerment charges against the prosecutor.
Through the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, the prosecutor declined to comment. The DA’s office declined to comment specifically on the prosecutor’s actions, but it released a short statement on the case.
“As in all cases of sexual assault, our hearts go out to the victim and her family,” Assistant District Attorney Terry Harman said in the statement. “We have recused ourselves from the handling of any filing decision and prosecution of any matters related to this situation.”
She added, “We cannot answer any case questions because we are not handling the case. And, of course, it would be inappropriate to comment on any potential personnel matter.”
The sexual assault investigation began Oct. 8, a day after the victim told her doctor that she had been sexually assaulted. In the ensuing police investigation, she gave accounts of three instances between August and October in which the same man approached her while she was walking her dog on the trail and touched her sexually.
In the beginning of November, the victim’s father, the prosecutor, went out on the trail and found a man who resembled her description of the suspect, which included a distinct tracksuit, and took his photo. The victim said it looked like her assailant, according to the police report.
A few days later, the victim’s mother spotted a man matching the suspect description, and followed him to his home located a couple of blocks off the trail, and they gave the address to police to conduct surveillance, the report states.
On Nov. 11, the prosecutor contacted police, saying he had video of the suspect wearing the same tracksuit, walking with his arm around the waist of the victim — his daughter — and at one point grabbing her to keep her from leaving him.
In the video, the suspect in the molestation, since identified as Lajmiri, was seen walking with the victim with his arm around her and his hand on her waist. The video taken by the prosecutor reportedly shows Lajmiri sitting with the girl on a nearby bench, pulling her back down after she tries to get up and leave, and then moving his head toward her. The victim, in a separate interview, said that was when the suspect “leaned in for a kiss on her mouth.” She also reported that she “felt as (if) she was not allowed to leave.”
Eventually, the suspect kissed the top of the victim’s head, then “allowed her to leave, and the victim walked away,” but the suspect followed her, according to the police report.
The prosecutor, in his account to police officers, said he followed the man and his daughter as this happened, but lost sight of them on two occasions.
Lajmiri was arrested the next day in the same area. He reportedly told investigators that he put his arms around the victim’s waist, kissed her hand and head, and sat with her on a bench on Nov. 11. He also said he was trying to guide the victim back down to the bench, not pulling her. And he said any contact he had with the victim’s breasts or buttocks was accidental, referring to the allegations about earlier sexual contacts with the girl. The other contact he had with her, he said, was “a sign of affection as a fatherly figure,” according to the police report.
But Lajmiri also told police he had trouble remembering the interactions, because he had Alzheimer’s disease, the police report states.
Several legal and law-enforcement experts who spoke to this news organization on background said they do not believe that the prosecutor’s actions would significantly compromise the case against Lajmiri. An entrapment defense, the experts said, would be hard to make because there is no evidence that the suspect was coerced into performing any criminal acts. But they added that the circumstances under which the videotape was made could result in the footage recorded by the prosecutor being excluded from evidence.
What struck officials and law-enforcement sources with knowledge of the case most was the idea of the reported victim being placed in harm’s way to gather the video evidence. According to the San Jose police report, the prosecutor told sexual-assault investigators that he created a plan with his daughter to lure the suspect, in which he would be following both of them closely.
San Jose police Chief Eddie Garcia declined to comment specifically on the case and the prosecutor’s involvement, but generally advised against citizens taking the law into their own hands.
“As a father, I understand how emotional it can be when your child is the victim of a crime. But we have to remember that the safety of the child comes first,” Garcia said, “and channel that frustration in a positive way to assist the investigation and not hinder it.”
Lajmiri is being held in the Santa Clara County jail on $3 million bail. He is scheduled to return to court Jan. 29.
No comments:
Post a Comment