A 23-year-old man is accused of raping a 20-year-old mother and burglarizing three apartments Saturday night at a San Diego Youth Services housing community in the Midway District, San Diego police said.<\/p>\n
Police identified the suspect as Diego Yanez. According to jail records, Yanez is charged with rape, burglary, assault and child cruelty. His bail was set at $1 million.<\/p>\n
Police said Yanez was still inside the woman’s apartment at the gated housing complex on Wing Street when officers arrived. The woman, who had a 1-month-old infant, and her baby had escaped by then.<\/p>\n
Yanez was not a tenant at the complex, according to San Diego Youth Services spokesperson Sandra Wellhausen. Residents said they did not know who he was or how he got inside.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have no idea. No one knows him or knew who he was,\u201d resident Marianna Guardian said.<\/p>\n
Guardian, a single mother who lives in the complex, said she has known the woman who was attacked for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am really close to the girl. I have known her years now, we went to high school together. She just gave birth a month or two prior. No one deserves to go through that,” she said.<\/p>\n
The housing community serves young adults, some from the county’s foster program. It has security cameras, flood lights and an 8-foot wooden fence across the back. Its parking gate is automatic and can only be opened by residents.<\/p>\n
Despite those security measures, police said Yanez got inside and burglarized three apartments.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes us live in fear,\u201d Guardian said.<\/p>\n
Neighbor Samantha Long, 18, was not home when her apartment was broken into Saturday night. Long said her screens were broken and her belongings were disturbed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe pissed on my carpet. He threw my lotions around and messed up my AC,” Long said.<\/p>\n
Long said she was disturbed to learn what happened to her next-door neighbor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s horrible, that\u2019s horrible,” Long said.<\/p>\n
The attack has left residents concerned about their safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to carry like a knife around, pepper spray and I plan to get a taser,” Long said.<\/p>\n
Yanez remains in custody and is due in court Wednesday.<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC San Diego. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC San Diego journalist edited the article for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 23-year-old man is accused of raping a 20-year-old mother and burglarizing three apartments Saturday night at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-443896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}