A St. Paul man has had criminal charges filed against him after he was accused of raping a woman that mistook him for being an Uber driver.
Francisco Alejandro Chale, 27, has been charged with kidnapping and criminal sexual conduct in the first-degree.
According to a criminal complaint, the St. Paul police were called to the 700 block of State Street around 4am on May 15th after a caller had reported a distraught woman was pounding on his door. From there, the officers then met the victim, who told them she had got into a vehicle she believed to be an Uber driver in Minneapolis, and was taken to St. Paul against her will and raped by Chale.
The officers had noted the woman was laying in a fetal position, rocking back and forth saying, “He’s going to kill me.” Officers also reported her dress being partially ripped, wearing no shoes, and had scrapes on her chest, legs, and face.
The victim told police she went to a bar with her friends the night before and had quite a bit to drink. As they left the bar to go home, the girls had planned to walk to one of their apartments, about 10 blocks away. However, one of the victim’s friends said they should get ride because of how intoxicated they were. When a vehicle pulled up to the curb, they got in, believing it was an Uber.
In the complaint, it states that the driver touched the woman’s leg and said that they were “looking good” so she then got out and said that they would find an Uber. The woman who was in the front seat got out, but the car sped away with the victim still in the back seat.
The victim said she then became more alert once she realized that she was being driven by an unknown man. She tried getting out but Chale told her, “If you try to leave, I’ll kill you.”
At some point in the night, the vehicle stopped and Chale jumped on top of the victim and raped her, according to the complaint. The victim said she had tried to call 911 but Chale continued to threaten her and then knocked the phone out of her hands.
The victim eventually was able to escape and ran to houses nearby calling out for help.
In the complaint, it shows surveillance video from a church nearby that had caught the struggle that appeared to be Chale and the victim. It had shown that the vicftim fell off of a 6 to 8 foot retaining wall and laid motionless for 6 minutes before getting up and knocking on doors of nearby houses for help.
The woman was taken to a hospital and underwent a sexual assault exam, which led to a DNA match to Chale, whose DNA sample had been obtained from an unrelated sexual assault investigation.
The police were able to track the victim’s phone and cross-refernced it with traffic cameras, and saw Chale’s vehicle as well as him throwing the victim’s phone and sandal out onto the road shortly after 5am.
When they arrested him on June 3, Chale had admitted to picking up the women and said that one did get out but that the other one wanted to go to her boyfriend’s house. He claimed the victim had thrown up and he stopped the car to help her get in the front seat, admitting that he did touch and kiss her but denied anything else. He said that any DNA found on the victim was from her touching him. ay morning.
Leave a Reply