FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A man from Palm Beach County is scheduled to face a pretrial detention hearing in Broward County on Tuesday, one week after police arrested him on multiple sexual battery charges.
Miguel Sales Mendez, 22, of Lake Worth Beach, is accused of raping a mentally-disabled 23-year-old woman he met through an online game called “Free Fighter,” according to an arrest warrant obtained by Local 10 News on Monday.
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Police said the assault happened in Fort Lauderdale in early September. The victim, they said, has “the mental capacity of a 12-year-old child.”
The arrest warrant states that Sales Mendez and the woman communicated through WhatsApp for months after meeting virtually through the game in June.
Police said he arranged to meet the woman on the afternoon of Sept. 9 and texted her that he was going to “take her to a ‘magical place.’”
The warrant states the woman was “scared” to go with Sales Mendez but he “threaten(ed) to come into the house by force if she did not come out to him.”
The woman, who lives with her parents, was able to sneak out after receiving the threat, police said.
According to the warrant, he then took the woman to a business complex at 1350 NE 56th St., parked his car, forced the woman out, told her to go to an area of “bushes and palm trees” and to turn off her cellphone.
He then raped her, police said.
After the assault, Sales Mendez, “who was in a hurry,” left the victim in the bushes behind the building and drove off, the warrant states.
Police said the victim, who a forensic examiner would later say “did not know what sex was,” then called 911 and was examined at a hospital.
According to police, DNA from a rape kit matched DNA collected from Sales Mendez during a traffic stop in Palm Beach County, after authorities had obtained a warrant to collect a sample.
Police arrested Sales Mendez on three counts of sexual battery on a mentally defective person and he remained behind bars without bond at the Broward Sheriff’s Office Paul Rein Detention Facility in Pompano Beach as of Monday.
The Guatemalan national also remained jailed on an immigration hold, according to jail records.