Man found guilty in violent rape
WOONSOCKET – A Superior Court jury on Monday returned guilty verdicts against a Providence man on four counts of rape stemming from a 2014 attack on his thengirlfriend in her Third Avenue apartment, Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin announced.
Leopoldo Belen, 36, was convict- ed in an attack that prosecutors argued began when he discovered that his girlfriend had smoked his last cigarette.
The jury deliberated for six hours over two days, following a weeklong trial before Associate Superior Court Justice Daniel A. Procaccini, according to Amy Kempe, spokeswoman for the attorney general.
Among those who testified during the trial was the victim, now 24, who recounted how Belen got angry on the day of the attack after they woke up and he found out she had smoked the last cigarettes in the house.
Initial police reports in the case alleged that the victim had been beaten, choked, raped with a bottle and deprived of food by Belen while he held her captive in the bathroom.
After she was able to escape from Belen, she ran downstairs clad in nothing but a bed sheet and knocked the apartment door of a neighbor who let her in. Once she was safe, she called 911.
Belen’s conviction comes almost three years to the day after the attack, which police said occurred on April 1, 2014.
Belen was arrested later that day in Pawtucket and had been held without bail since his arrest. A date for sentencing has not yet been set by the court.
At the time of the attack, Belen already had a long criminal record that included a two-year stretch at
the Adult Correctional Institutions on a conviction for felony domestic assault in 2008.
Following his arrest, however, a Providence County grand jury returned indictments against Belen that stemmed from a 2013 homicide in Providence and a robbery.
The grand jury indicted Belen on charges of murder, breaking and entering, assault with the intent to rob, using a firearm while committing a crime of violence and a string of related charges.
Prosecutors say Belen and another man, Joel Valdez, broke into the home of Jonathan Angilly with the intent to rob him October 2013, assaulted Angilly with a firearm and murdered another man, Delor Cabral.
Valdez has already pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. The charges against Belen are pending.