House painter arrested on suspicion of trying to rape client at knifepoint

SUNNYVALE >> A man who worked as a contract painter at a Sunnyvale woman’s home went back there in the middle of the night and tried to rape her at knifepoint, and was arrested two days after the victim and her teen daughter fought him off and sent him fleeing, authorities said.

Jorge Perez Diaz, 32, of Mountain View was arrested Monday in connection with the attack and booked into the Elmwood men’s jail on suspicion of assault with the intent to commit rape, assault with a deadly weapon, false imprisonment, making criminal threats and burglary. He was being held on $250,000 bail as of Tuesday.

The woman suffered serious injuries after she grabbed her attacker’s knife by the blade to protect herself from getting stabbed, said Capt. Craig Anderson of the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety.

Still, she saw enough during the early Saturday attack to recognize him as possibly being one of several contractors who had recently performed renovation work on her Yarmouth Terrace home

Anderson said that the investigation into the weekend attack also revealed that Diaz was the subject of a suspicious-circumstance report in San Jose from May, alleging that while he was working at another home occupied by a single woman, he closed a bedroom door to isolate her, prompting her to flee the residence.

“To us, we’re not thinking this is the first time he’s done something like this,” Anderson said.

In the Sunnyvale attack, police say the woman was sleeping in her bedroom when around 3:45 a.m. Diaz entered the home through an unlocked sliding door — which contractors had used to go in and out of the home during their work —