Fugitive captured:

Missing pastor convicted of molesting teenage girl found in Mexico

An East Bay pastor who was convicted of molesting a teenage girl has been caught in Mexico, where he fled during his trial, the Contra Costa County district attorney’s office said Wednesday.

Prosecutors said Fernando Maldonado was deported from Mexico on Tuesday and flown to Los Angeles, which will send him to Contra Costa County for sentencing April 13. The Mexican government located Maldonado after county officers contacted U.S. marshals, said district attorney’s spokesman Scott Alonso.

Maldonado was charged in 2015 with sexual abuse of a girl in his parish at Morello Baptist Church in Martinez, starting when she was 13 and continuing until she was 16. Prosecutors said she broke off contact with him in December 2014.

Maldonado, who was also a minister at Grace Bible Church in Pleasant Hill, was released on $1.29 million bail, put up by six relatives who used their property as collateral. The trial began in December 2017, and after two days of testimony by the girl, Maldonado disappeared. The lead prosecutor said Maldonado, 37, had been seen driving south on Interstate 5 near San Diego, apparently headed to Mexico with his wife and children.

The trial continued without him for three more days, and a jury on Dec. 13 convicted him of 23 charges, including child molestation, unlawful sexual intercourse and sodomy of a person under 18. Prosecutors said they presented evidence during the trial of a recorded phone call in which the girl confronted Maldonado about the sexual abuse, and other evidence that they had had sex inside the church.

The maximum sentence is 34 years in prison.