18-Year-Old Charged : Man Held in Sex Assaults of 9 Women

An 18-year-old gas station attendant was charged Monday with sexually assaulting nine women in the San Fernando Valley, including a mail carrier and the girlfriend of a policeman.

Authorities said Lawrence Anthony Esparza of Mission Hills is scheduled to be arraigned today in San Fernando Municipal Court on 27 felony counts stemming from 10 incidents between July and February involving the nine women.

The victims, all between the ages of 17 and 25, were threatened with a knife or a gun, said Dist. Atty. Pamela Davis-Springer.

Esparza, who police said lives with his mother, had originally been charged with breaking into a Granada Hills apartment Feb. 29, tying up one of the female occupants and raping the other.

The rape victim called police shortly before a man broke into her room, and Esparza was arrested after fleeing the apartment, Davis-Springer said. A police officer’s hand was broken during the attempt to arrest Esparza, the district attorney said.

Eight other rape victims identified Esparza as their assailant after being shown his photograph, said Los Angeles Police Detective Richard Ward.

One woman, a mail carrier, was accosted July 22 in daylight and raped on the front porch of an occupied home, Ward said. The occupants did not hear anything, he said.

Six days later, the rapist broke into a woman’s home and sexually assaulted her. He returned a day later, Ward said, but this time the woman’s boyfriend, an LAPD officer, was waiting for him. The attacker evaded the officer, Ward said.

Esparza is charged with seven counts of rape, four of residential burglary, three of assault with a deadly weapon, two of attempted sodomy, three of assault with intent to commit rape, two of kidnaping and one each of sodomy, battery on a peace officer, false imprisonment, rape by a foreign object, forcible oral copulation and attempted kidnaping.

Esparza is being held in County Jail in lieu of $300,000 bail.