ICE has swooped in to take custody of a migrant accused of trying to kidnap and rape a 4-year-old after Fairfax County prosecutors dropped the case against him.
Hyrum Baquedano Rodriguez, a Honduran immigrant, was being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Caroline Detention Facility in Caroline County.
He was initially charged in June 2023 with breaking into a home and attempting to abduct and “defile” the child. But Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano steadily reduced the charges, eventually reaching a plea deal that called for less than two years in prison.
Two separate judges rejected the plea deal, the latest coming on Friday. So Mr. Descano dropped the case altogether.
Mr. Descano’s office blamed the judges.
“The allegations in this case are deeply concerning. Unfortunately, there were multiple evidentiary issues with this case, and when the judge was presented with these facts, she declined to accept the plea agreement, which we viewed as the best opportunity for accountability. We are disappointed in the judge’s decision,” said Laura Birnbaum, deputy chief of staff for the commonwealth’s attorney.
But critics said Mr. Descano was trying to show leniency for an illegal immigrant.
“Sick Soros DA drops all charges,” Virginians 4 Safe Communities said on social media, calling Mr. Descano’s decision an act of “petulance.”
According to court documents, on June 15, 2023, a man broke into the home where the 4-year-old and her mother were asleep in separate beds in a room in the Annandale region of the county. The mother awoke to see the window blinds rustling and heard the girl yelling from the living room. The girl said a “big man” had grabbed her from her bed and tried to carry her out, but apparently abandoned the plans when she started screaming.
Police found a shoe print outside the window and palm and thumb prints from the window, and they matched them to Mr. Baquedano.
Prosecutors initially charged him with burglary “with the intent to commit murder, rape, robbery or arson” and with “abduction, with intent to defile” the 4-year-old.
By August 2023 those charges were reduced to abduction, the “intent to defile” was crossed out of the warrant. By February 2024, the age of the victim was dropped from the indictment, reducing the charges from a Class 2 felony, punishable by life in prison, to a Class 5 felony, good for up to 10 years.
The burglary charge was also reduced to a misdemeanor “unlawful entry” charge along the way, reducing the maximum penalty from 20 years to just 1 year.
Under the first plea deal, time served would be capped at 2 years.
Judge Randy I. Bellows rejected that last June, writing that the plea deal “fell woefully short” of justice, particularly since Mr. Baquedano was a repeat offender.
“When the court system has tried without success to bring a defendant into compliance with the law, and when that defendant has committed a crime of such gravity that it can only be described as posing an existential threat to a child’s life, the only goal of sentencing likely to protect the community is a lengthy period of incarceration,” the judge wrote.
Prosecutors, in defending the plea, had said they couldn’t rely on the 4-year-old as a witness and said there were too many other iffy parts to the case. They feared not being able to prove Mr. Baquedano was the man who grabbed the child.
But Judge Bellows said the evidence of the prints from the windows was pretty damning, and certainly good enough to win a burglary conviction.
“Is the commonwealth [attorney] really concerned that the jury might think there were two break-ins that evening, one to abduct, and one for some other purpose?” he chided.
He pointed out Mr. Baquedano had five other convictions already, including once that began as burglary or indecent liberty charges.
Mr. Baquedano was in the U.S. on “a lawful grant of political asylum,” the judge wrote.
