Man given 5 years for West Side rape

Bogar Cortez Diaz was 17 when he was accused of taking part in the rape of a woman that he and two others had picked up in an SUV from a West Side street.

Diaz, now two weeks shy of his 20th birthday, was sentenced Thursday to five years in adult prison after pleading guilty to attempted kidnapping and abduction with sexual imposition.

Diaz will be credited with the two and a half years he has spent in the Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center and the county jail since his arrest. A Juvenile Court judge transferred his case to adult court last year.

Common Pleas Judge David E. Cain imposed the sentence, based on a recommendation from prosecuting and defense attorneys. In addition to prison, he must register as a sex offender every six months for 25 years.

Assistant Prosecutor Sarah Ackman said Diaz was in a Ford Expedition with Gerardo Hernandez-Carrera and David Pablo on Sept. 9, 2014, when they picked up the woman, who knew Diaz, and asked if she wanted to smoke marijuana. The victim was driven to a secluded area near Frost and Emmett avenues in Prairie Township, where Hernandez-Carrerra and Diaz began ripping off her clothing.

Ackman said the woman was sexually assaulted before asking if she could get out of the vehicle to go to the bathroom. When she got outside, she ran and managed to reach I-270, where she flagged down a motorist for help.

Defense attorney Jeremy Dodgion said Diaz is “extremely remorseful for his judgment in following through with what appears, and I think the state would agree, is the lead of one of the co-defendants.”

Hernandez-Carrera, 21, was sentenced in July 2016 to 15 years in prison for his role in the case, as well as for a similar attack on another woman on Sept. 22, 2014.

The case against Pablo, who was 16 at the time of the incident, is in doubt after Cain ruled in December that Pablo’s statements to sheriff’s detectives should be suppressed.

Cain found that Pablo was interviewed in “intimidating surroundings” without a parent present after investigators took him from Westland High School to an interrogation room at the sheriff’s office.

Prosecutors have appealed Cain’s ruling to the county Court of Appeals.