Mother Finds Facebook Video Of Teenage Daughter’s Assault; Leads to Arrest of 7

A mother will do anything to protect her child.

A Facebook video recently surfaced of a 16-year-old girl being assaulted while unconscious during a house party in Providence, Rhode Island. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

But thanks to her quick thinking mother, who recorded the video with her cellphone, eight men have now been charged and arrested for the crime.

Col. Hugh Clements Jr., chief of the Providence police, described the assault as one of the worst in his 35 years with the agency.

“The incident was horrifying, devastating, disturbing on so many levels to this young girl, to her family, and to this community,” he said during a press conference Wednesday. He said the suspects “should be held to the highest extent of criminal prosecution.”

The teenager, whose identity has been withheld, was assaulted in December after she lost consciousness at a party. The mother’s discovery helped police arrest all eight men involved, said Police Maj. David Lapatin.

In March, the mother received a tip about a video of the assault shared on Facebook, which was posted by one of the perpetrators. She found it, recorded it, and handed it over to the authorities, NBC News reports.

“It helped us a lot in identifying a lot of people,” Lapatin said in a telephone interview Thursday.

Seven of the individuals, all men, were arrested and charged over the past two weeks. Six, including Malcolm Baptista, 19; Luis Cabrera, 19; Carlos Chacon, 20; Erving Keith Colon, 25; Luis Luna, 19; and Jose Vargas, 19 — were arrested and charged with assault with intent to commit sexual assault and conspiracy.

The seventh man, Richard Tarell Chester, 20, was arrested and charged with first-degree sexual assault. The eighth, Carlos Vasquez, 19, is being sought on charges of assault with intent to commit sexual assault and conspiracy.

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Colon, Vargas, and Chester are in police custody with no bond. Cabrera, Chacon, Baptista, and Luna have since posted bail but could not be reached for comment.
Police say the suspects are friends. “They are players that are well-known by members of the Providence Police Department,” Clements said.

The teen originally gave a statement in December, but it did not move forward until the discovery of the video.

“There were a lot of suspects,” Lapatin said. “She really didn’t know who exactly they were. She had nicknames. She had a couple of names.”

The teen had been invited to the party at a residence on Glenham Street by two people she knew, Lapatin reported. She remembered drinking and smoking marijuana before she started to feel unwell. She told police that she went to a bedroom to lie down, and that is when someone made her consume more alcohol, and she then lost consciousness.

When she woke up, she was naked in a shower and was surrounded by eight to fifteen men.

“I’ve seen some bad triple murders of children,” said Lapatin, who has worked in law enforcement for 37 years. “And this ranks right up there as one of the horrors we’ve had in our city.”