2ER docs accused in sexual assault

Affidavit: Woman recalls being in strange house, waking up to attacks.

It started as a Friday night of fun with a group of young professionals that included a trip to a well-known downtown bar and karaoke night at a popular restaurant.

It ended with one of them telling police that she passed out and has hazy memories of being in a strange home with two men sexually assaulting her.

Now, two Texas doctors — one from West Lake Hills and the other from College Station — have been named as suspects in the March incident and are accused of photographing the crime in progress, according to documents obtained by the American-Statesman. One was found with a drug thought to be morphine in his bedroom, according to an arrest affidavit.

Neither Dr. David Miranda nor Dr. Anthony Amoroso, both emergency room physicians who are identified in a search warrant, have been charged with assaulting the woman, but Austin police and Assistant District Attorney Justin Wood confirmed this week that an investigation is continuing. They declined to comment further.

The doctors have hired Austin defense attorneys. Aaron Mueller, who couldn’t be reached for comment, is representing Miranda, and Brian Roark is Amoroso’s lawyer.

“Dr. Amoroso’s name is listed

in the arrest affidavit for another individual,” Roark said. “Dr. Amoroso has not been arrested for anything and has passed a polygraph regarding his conduct that day. Before writing her report, the officer never asked for his side of the story. He is innocent of any wrongdoing and it is a shame if his name is being mentioned otherwise.”

Miranda is facing related charges. During a raid at his home on Gregory Place in West Lake Hills last month as part of the investigation, police charged him with illegal drug possession after investigators said they discovered a glass vial with a morphine label, an arrest affidavit said. Police also said in the document that they also found plastic bags with “a white powdery substance” — later identified as cocaine — in a bedroom dresser drawer.

The arrest warrant for Miranda also named both men as suspects in the alleged sexual assault.

A seven-page search warrant request signed by a judge in early June provides details of the incident and how the woman used her own sleuthing skills to help identify the men.

According to the search warrant, the woman’s evening began with a group meeting for drinks after work at Little Woodrow’s in downtown Austin, where the woman reported drinking three mimosas and a glass of wine. From there, they went to the downtown Chinatown restaurant for karaoke, where she had a couple of drinks and half a glass of wine.

The woman’s cellphone showed she booked a car to her house at 1:51 a.m. March 25, according to a search warrant affidavit. However, the search warrant said she told police that after that, her only memory was waking up in a strange house with a man later identified as Miranda assaulting her and arguing with another man who was saying that she was “unconscious, unresponsive and that he (Miranda) needed to stop what he was doing.”

She said she blacked out again, but woke up twice more to an assault, including one time in which she said both men were participating, the affidavit says.

“The victim stumbled to the bathroom and was so sick she had to lay back down on the bed asking the suspect what happened,” the affidavit says. “He told the victim she was really drunk and told them she had lost her friends.”

The woman said once she was alert enough, she asked one of the men to take her back to her car and later got a text from one of them.

“The victim was able to figure out more about who Miranda was by retracing her steps and taking the route the second suspect took to get her back to her vehicle,” the affidavit says. “The victim was very familiar with West Lake Hills in Travis County, Texas, and recognized exactly where (Miranda’s) house was located. She was able to obtain an address and performed a reverse address lookup to find out who lived at the house.”

While working with police, the victim texted Miranda and asked if any photos or videos were taken during the incident. He said the other man took a photo of her and sent it to him, the affidavit says. Police have since gotten a search warrant for his phone, and a forensic exam has been underway.

The woman then had exchanges with Amoroso, who “stated he did not have any photos of her and if he did take photos he probably already deleted them,” the affidavit says.

The woman’s name is being withheld because the Statesman doesn’t identify victims of sexual assault.

Miranda is out on bail for the drug possession charges. He was arrested in Bell County by members of the U.S. Marshals Service while working as a contractor for the Metroplex Hospital in Killeen.

The Texas Medical Board website shows he graduated from Cornell University and has been on the faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas.

Amoroso has hospital privileges at St. Joseph Hospital in Bryan and graduated from UT Southwestern, according to medical board records.