Trial begins for man accused of impersonating police officer
WEST PALM BEACH — It was Ladies Night at Pawn Shop, and one of the Clematis nightclub’s 21-year-old employees was three free drinks into an impromptu gathering of friends there on her night off when she ventured outside to look for one of those friends.
What happened next is the subject of a trial that began Wednesday in Palm Beach County Circuit Court with prosecutors accusing security guard Cristian Leon of luring the woman into his car in the early hours of April 1, 2016 by telling her he was a police officer, then forcing her to drive around with him as he demanded sex. Leon, now 21 himself, is also accused of a similar encounter days earlier with a now-29-year-old exotic dancer, who said Leon pulled her over, claimed to be a cop and asked her to show him her breasts.
Leon is charged with impersonating a police officer during the commission of a felony, kidnapping, false imprisonment and other charges.
After prosecutors and attorneys for Leon gave their opening statements to a mostly female jury, prosecutors called the former nightclub worker, now 23, as their first witness. She said she got into Leon’s white van because he was wearing a uniform similar to the ones she saw on West Palm Beach police officers she encountered at work.
Leon promised to help her find the friend she was looking for, she said, but then told her he wouldn’t let her out of the car until she performed a sex act on him.
“Did you believe you were about to get raped?” Assistant State Attorney Robert Johnson asked the woman.
“Yes, or worse than that,” she answered, later adding: “I thought he was going to rape me or kill me .... ”
She said the ordeal lasted less than eight minutes, and after she screamed, an angry Leon let her out of his car at Tamarind Avenue and Fern Street, where she called police.
Assistant Public Defenders Kelsey Bissonnette and Nicholas Stebinger called Wednesday’s alleged victim’s story a simple case of misunderstanding.
In her opening statements, Bissonnette told jurors they would hear that Leon approached the woman in his car and simply asked what she was doing out on the street by herself. The woman, Bissonnette said, assumed Leon was an officer because she mistook his security guard uniform for a police uniform.
“He didn’t ask any of the normal questions a police officer would ask. He didn’t do any of the normal things a police officer would do. All he did was ask why she was there,” Bissonnette said.
Later, Johnson and Assistant State Attorney Amy Berkman sparred with Leon’s attorneys over whether jurors should be allowed to see the caption of a photo from Leon’s social media page from the day of one of the incidents. In the photo, Leon is dressed in a police officer’s uniform, and the caption read: “Finally hired for West Palm.”
Stebinger said he agreed that prosecutors could show jurors the photo, but asked Circuit Judge Samantha Schosberg Feuer to keep jurors from seeing the caption. Feuer ultimately agreed to let jurors see the caption.
Testimony ended for the day Wednesday with a West Palm Beach police detective who said Leon initially spoke to her for 20 minutes and denied allegations in the case, then asked if he could “start over” and tell the truth. He then said he encountered the women but denied the rest of the claims.
Testimony in the case will continue today, and jurors could begin deliberating as early as Friday.