The Fresno Bee
FRESNO, Calif. — Fresno firefighter Jeffrey Sanchez remained adamant that he is innocent of the alleged rape of a 19-year-old Fresno State student, but at the end of a preliminary hearing Wedenesday a judge ruled he would stand trial.
Sanchez, 36, is charged in a criminal complaint with rape, forcible oral copulation and forcible sexual penetration of a woman he met at a Clovis bar while out with his friends. He was arrested Jan. 19 after the woman told Fresno County sheriff’s detectives he had sex with her against her will.
“I’m innocent, and I’m being falsely accused,” said Sanchez, a firefighter for eight years, after the hearing. His defense is that the sexual relations were consensual. “I risk losing everything because of this.”
The hearing, which only included testimony from one of the arresting sheriff’s deputies and the sheriff’s lead investigator, probed the events of the night of Dec. 18 and the morning after. It was then when Jane, as she was referenced during the hearing, and her sorority sister went to Martin’s Bar in Old Town Clovis, where they met Sanchez and his friends, to celebrate the end of final exams.
Virginia Rodriguez, a sheriff’s investigator, testified that Jane told her Sanchez approached her and her friend inside the bar, which she entered using a fake ID. She told Sanchez she was 22 and said her name was “Nikki” because she was not interested in him, Rodriguez testified.
The group — Jane, her friend, Sanchez, two of his friends and one of their girlfriends — left the bar and drove to the men’s home on South Fowler Avenue near the Sunnyside Country Club in southeast Fresno. Jane told sheriff’s deputies she was reluctant to go to Sanchez’s home, but did so because she didn’t want to leave her friend, who was interested in one of Sanchez’s friends.
A sheriff’s detective’s affidavit says she consumed a mix of beer and hard liquor and smoked marijuana that night. The woman alleges Sanchez drugged her, though results from a sexual assault kit done the following day showed no signs of date-rape drugs.
Deputy Preston Little, who was outside Sanchez’s home the morning of Dec. 18, testified the woman did not seem impaired by alcohol or marijuana, but was “overly shy and had her head down when I was asking questions.”
The prosecution argued Jane was vocally insistent throughout the encounter she was not sexually interested in Sanchez. Rodriguez said Jane described to her the “uncomfortable” situation where she tried to put off advances from Sanchez while the two were left alone. She called a friend asking to pick up her and her sorority sister.
Inside Sanchez’s room, unlit save for the light of a television screen, Jane told Rodriguez she was forced to have sex against her will.
Texts sent from Jane’s phone to her friend’s phone, both which were turned over for evidence, read, “Hurry up” and “I can’t breathe.”
“Probably about 30 times she kept telling him (Sanchez) to stop,” Rodriguez testified.
Jane did not take the stand Wednesday.
“We’re disappointed the accuser was not here to testify so that we could ask her questions,” Sanchez’s attorney, Jeff Hammerschmidt, said after the hearing. “Cross-examining police witnesses really doesn’t get us too far.”
Hammerschmidt questioned Jane’s credibility, pointing out she never told Sanchez her real age or name and was underage drinking. He said there were inconsistent witness statements. He cross-examined the legitimacy of a “biased investigation only looking at one side.”
He pointed out that a sexual assault kit was completed on both Jane and Sanchez, but the clothing Jane wore the night of the alleged incident was not turned over for evidence.
Hammerschmidt questioned why the investigation did not file a warrant for the surveillance video at Martin’s Bar for that night, which was taped over and unavailable the week following the encounter. He asked the police witnesses why they didn’t immediately ask Jane her age.
Sanchez was placed on paid administrative leave by the fire department following his Jan. 19 arrest. He’s now working at the department on “special assignment.”
A crowd-funding page was created for Sanchez soliciting money for legal fees, the bulk of which will go toward retaining expert witnesses during trial.
“I have not broken my oath” as a firefighter, Sanchez said outside court. He appeared calm during Wednesday’s hearing, exchanging smiles with a crowd of more than 15 family and friends while the hearing was in recess.
“I understand these are very serious charges, and I do believe that if someone is sexually assaulted they should definitely report that to the authorities,” he said. “But in this case, that’s the not situation.”
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