It’s unknown whether or not self-proclaimed “leisure skilled” David Pearce knew the destiny of the girls he was prosecuted for drugging and raping over a 14-year interval.
What is for certain, nonetheless, is that a type of girls — who remodeled her sexual assault trauma right into a service profession — wasn’t there to witness his sentencing.
Pearce was handed a 146-year jail sentence Wednesday afternoon in Los Angeles Superior Court docket after being convicted of first-degree homicide for the overdose deaths of mannequin Christy Giles and architect Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, in addition to the rape of seven different girls from 2007 to 2021.
Amongst Pearce’s victims was La Mesa Police Officer Lauren Craven, in accordance with the L.A. County district lawyer’s workplace. The 25-year-old officer was struck and killed by a automobile on the 8 Freeway close to San Diego on Oct. 20.
The New York Put up first reported her connection to the case.
Craven was serving to motorists concerned in a visitors collision when she was fatally struck. A type of people additionally was killed by the identical driver. A suspect has been arrested on suspicion of driving beneath the affect.
Craven was honored with a funeral procession from San Diego’s Snapdragon Stadium to Skyline Church in Rancho San Diego on Tuesday.
The L.A. County district lawyer’s workplace didn’t affirm any particulars aside from that Pearce was accused of sexually assaulting Craven in February 2020.
“Any individual dropped one thing in her drink, after which when she was unconscious utilized IV medication and stored her for a day and a half,” her father, David Craven, advised NBC 7 San Diego.
Afterward, “she determined proper then and there, ‘I’m going to grow to be a police officer,’” he advised the outlet.
On the time, Craven was a scholar at Loyola Marymount College. She graduated in 2023, entered the police academy and joined the La Mesa Police Division in February 2024.
Her father mentioned his 115-pound daughter took near a yr off to construct her power for the trials of coaching.
“It was her dream,” her father mentioned of graduating from the police academy.
