FULLERTON, Calif. — A jury has found a man guilty of committing lewd acts on a 15-year-old girl who he later married, and who had his child and stayed with him for a decade after she disappeared from her mother’s California home.
Jurors reached their verdict Friday in the case against 42-year-old Isidro Garcia. He was found not guilty of kidnapping to commit a sex crime and the jury deadlocked on a charge of rape.
Prosecutors said Garcia kidnapped his then-girlfriend’s teenage daughter after a fight at the family’s Santa Ana apartment in 2004 and threatened and beat her for years until she mustered the courage to report him to authorities.
Garcia contended the teen ran away with him willingly to escape an unhappy home and fabricated the abduction story in 2014 after reconnecting with her family on Facebook.
Garcia now faces four years and four months in prison according to KTLA. He will be sentenced April 15.
