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Victim speaks out after Herndon rape suspect's arrest
A victim and a police chief are speaking out to FOX 5's Josh Rosenthal as we learn more about a man accused of raping a stranger this week -- despite a long history of prior arrests.
HERNDON, Va. - Another woman says she was attacked by the same man accused of raping a woman on a popular walking trail in downtown Herndon.
Police said Tuesday they believed the suspect, Denis Humberto Navarette Romero, had other victims. He’s been described as a repeat offender with a troubling history.
Romero, a Honduran national in the U.S. illegally, has a documented history of sexual assaults and indecent exposures in the region dating back to 2022, according to Herndon Police Chief Maggie DeBoard.
Romero has been arrested and released multiple times. He choked a Herndon police officer in June 2022 when they were responding to a groping incident and was later released.
Police Chief Maggie Deboard says they charged him with felony assault on a law enforcement officer but the Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney downgraded the charge to simple assault — a misdemeanor.
"I mean he literally tried to get his hands around our officer's neck trying to choke him so we don't understand that one," DeBoard said.
Romero was once again taken into custody on Oct. 19 for indecent exposure and was sentenced to 50 days behind bars but he was released 25 days early, on Nov. 14, based on a ‘good behavior law’ in Virginia.
Just four days later, he was arrested for raping a woman on the Washington and Old Dominion Trail in Herndon.
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VA rape suspect released from jail 4 days before attacking again
Another woman who says she was attacked by the same man accused of raping a woman on a popular walking trail in downtown Herndon spoke exclusively to FOX 5 today. Police said Tuesday that they believed the suspect, Denis Humberto Navarette Romero, had other victims. He’s been described as a repeat offender with a troubling history.
Jennifer Pugh was the woman who filed the police report after he followed her home before exposing himself.
"He kept coming trying to grab my dog. Then he was trying to come after me he was saying stuff. He didn't speak English and then all of a sudden he started pulling his stuff out," Pugh told FOX 5. "I said ‘there's Ring cameras all around, you know’ and he didn't care."
ICE has not yet confirmed whether they were notified of Romero's presence in the country illegally after these incidents.
For both, he was transferred to the custody of the Fairfax County Sheriff's Office. The sheriff's website says their policy is that "ICE is notified every time an undocumented immigrant is taken into our custody."
"It's frustrating because I tell the community you should feel safe here and I do believe they are safe here, I truly do, but when you have cases like this, I look at this and see if some part of the system…if it was all working together, if there was a way to make it work, this would never have happened," DeBoard said. "I don't think you can point the finger at any one place to blame because it's a conglomerate of problems."
The sheriff says anyone committed to the adult detention center is fingerprinted and those prints are transferred to the Commonwealth who then submits them to federal law enforcement agencies.
The Commonwealth's Attorney did not explain their decision to downgrade the charges but says he was prosecuted for the incident and served jail time as a result.