A driver from Denver Ridarehare condemned for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a dozen passengers was sentenced on Friday to a 290 -year prison sentence, prosecutors said.
John Pastor-Mendoza sexually assaulted women between 2018 and 2022, while passing through the shared travel driver that his victims had requested, Denver district prosecutor, John Walsh.
The Pastor-Mendoza was convicted of a jury in October for 30 criminal charges, even of sexual kidnapping and aggression.
“I get in front of you today as a survivor of a true monster,” said victim Rachel Perry, District Judge Karen Brody at Friday’s audience, reported NBC Affiliate Kusa de Denver. “They took me in March 2019. Since then, life has never been the same.”
In some cases, Mendoza assaulted women in his vehicle, and in others, he took them to another place where he assaulted them, Walsh said.
Walsh praised the courage of the victims.
“Pastor-Mendoza victimized 12 women in a series of calculated, cruel and despicable crimes for four years,” Walsh said in a statement. “Judge Brody’s severe sentence is completely appropriate.”
Pastor-Mendoza said Friday that he was innocent, the station reported.
“I never put a hand on anyone. I wasn’t raised like that,” he said.
The Pastor-Mendoza, who had worked for Lyft, was arrested on August 19, 2022.
Some of the women informed the police that they acclaimed walks after drinking, mainly in bars, and woke up with sexually assaulted, police said in a sworn statement of arrest.
DNA’s evidence helped confirm that the same suspect was involved, police said in the order.
Perry and other victims spoke after the sentence.
“I survived a monster, we all did,” he said. “And today I feel we have justice.”
