Man convicted in assault on woman
27-year-old suspected of attacking 7 women over 7-month period.
A Travis County jury on Thursday found a man guilty of sexually assaulting a 56-year-old woman in North Austin two years ago.
Nicodemo Coria-Gonzalez, 27, was convicted of aggravated sexual assault after a forensic analyst linked him to the attack through DNA evidence found on the victim. The eight women and four men on the jury deliberated for four hours before returning with their verdict Thursday.
The conviction opened the door for TravisCounty prosecutors to use the sentencing phase of the trial to present evidence related to other attacks for which Coria-Gonzalez is charged. In all, police say he attacked seven women over a seven-month period beginning in December 2015. Authorities say many of the incidents happened along a dirt path off Ferguson Lane that Coria-Gonzalez described as his “garden.”
Jurors could give Coria-Gonzalez a sentence of five to 99 years in prison. Sentencing is expected to conclude next week.
The victim in this trial testified that she was outside of a convenience store on Rundberg Lane late on April 10, 2016, when she was blindsided by a blow to the head. She said she fell unconscious
and awoke in the passenger seat of a black sports car with a man pinning her down by her throat. The woman told the jury the man drove down an isolated dirt path and shoved her out of the car. He assaulted her while putting a knife to her throat, she said.
A forensic analyst testified that a DNA sample taken from the victim is 1.9 billion times more likely to belong to Coria-Gonzalez and her than to an unknown man and her.
In closing arguments, Coria-Gonzalez’s attorney, Selena Alvarenga, said the jury likely had more unanswered questions than they had at the beginning of the trial. The victim, Alvarenga noted, testified that her face was swollen as a result of injuries sustained in the attack.
Police investigators and a doctor said the woman’s face was not swollen. The woman told police the man pressured her to remove her clothes, but testified that the man had cut off the clothes with a knife.
Prosecutor Amy Meredith said the inconsistencies are understandable given the circumstances.
“We’re all fallible,” Meredith said. “Imagine one of the worst things happening to you. Imagine the trauma that does to you.”
Coria-Gonzalez, a Mexican citizen, is living in the country illegally and has been deported five times for past criminal convictions.
After Thursday’s conviction, three women accusing Coria-Gonzalez of attacking them in separate cases lined up to testify. A 25-yearold woman from Copperas Cove said she was in Austin with friends in December 2015 when she went for a walk outside of her room at a North Austin hotel.
She said she encountered a man and agreed to get in his car for a ride.
“I woke up, and he was on top of me,” she said. “I didn’t know if he was going to kill me.”
Prosecutors said Coria-Gonzalez was linked to the attack through DNA.
Another woman said she was assaulted in May 2015 by a man whom she had met a week earlier.
The man had agreed to take her to an H-E-B, she said, but instead became upset and threatened her with a knife as he drove to a wooded area and assaulted her.
The jury mistakenly heard that woman’s 911 call earlier in the trial after prosecutors mixed up their files and played the wrong audio file. Coria-Gonzalez’s lawyers requested a mistrial, but that was denied by retired state District Judge Wilford Flowers, who is filling in for Judge David Crain.