News Daytona Beach
December 8, 2013
A 27-year-old Mexican man is locked up after police charge him with raping a woman who cannot hear or speak.
Juan Corona-Martinez of Becca Lane in DeLand is held on $50,000 bond following his arrest on Friday.
The DeLand Police Department says they were called out to Florida Hospital DeLand on November 19th when a 37-year-old woman told a friend she had been raped by Corona-Martinez.
That woman – who was not identified in the arrest report – claims she had met Corona-Martinez at a birthday party on the night of November 18th and invited him and 2 other friends to her home after they had left the party to buy wine.
According to the arrest report, the 2 friends left the woman’s home soon after arriving and Corona-Martinez stayed behind.
She told DeLand P.D. she was cooking food for Corona-Martinez in the kitchen when he approached her from behind and started kissing her neck, telling her that he liked her.
The woman told police she kept telling Corona-Martinez that she did not want to have sex with him, but that Corona-Martinez “did not care”, forcing her into the bedroom so that they could have sex.
After the alleged attack, the woman said she threw up in the bathroom and ordered Corona-Martinez to get out of her house.
When questioned the following day by Spanish-speaking detectives, Martinez claimed initially he did not have sex with her, but changed his story later on, saying that the woman started it all by kissing him after he hugged her.
Martinez also told investigators that the woman was apparently upset over a recent break-up she had with a lesbian lover and that he had come to DeLand around 3 months ago as an illegal immigrant.
He was arrested after the police feared he could leave the area if he thought he was about to be arrested for the alleged sexual assault.