By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
A Del Rio man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison following his convictions on two counts of sexual assault and one count of felony family violence in state district court here, District Attorney Suzanne West announced.
Alan Navarro, 38, Del Rio resident, was tried in 83rd Judicial District Court before Judge Robert E. Cadena on two counts of sexual assault, second-degree felonies, and one count of family violence assault by occlusion/strangulation, a third-degree felony, West told The 830 Times.
West said Navarro had been in prison previously, which increased the penalty range that could be considered following his convictions on the three offenses.
“These charges stemmed from an ongoing relationship that involved family violence, and these offenses occurred in October 2022. Right before that, in September of that year, he had been arrested for threatening the woman in the relationship and holding a gun to her head,” West said.
“We tried that case last December and got a hung jury because they didn’t find the weapon at the house,” the district attorney added.
“Because of that previous incident, the woman told Navarro she did not want him to have any more guns, so the (October 2022) incident happened because he was telling her that he wanted her to get back the gun that the police had taken, and she was saying, ‘I don’t want you to have a gun, and if you have a gun, we’re breaking up,’ because she was afraid of him. This was the pattern of their relationship, and she attempted to end the relationship.
“She was bringing him some belongings that were at her house, and then they ended up getting in an argument. The argument began because he was excessively jealous, and he started looking at her phone, even though they were broken up and saw that she had blocked somebody on Facebook. He took that to mean that it was somebody recent that she was trying to hide, and he lost his temper.
“They were in a vehicle together for an hour-and-a-half. At the very beginning, he looked at her phone and hit her in the face, and then became increasingly violent. He hit her in the face and head, while she attempted to cover her nose. There was blood on the door, the steering wheel, and other places, along with broken fingernails from her attempting to cover her face and keep him from breaking her nose on the steering wheel. As he became angrier, he demanded she have sex with him and when she said she didn’t want to, he forced her to perform oral sex, and then punched her some more, ordering her into the back seat where he sexually assaulted her again,” West said.
She said evidence in the trial showed Navarro abused cocaine and became aggressive when he did so, and this evening was indicative of those actions.
“One of the big things we had to keep talking to the jury about was that people have sort of a TV version of what a sex assault case is, and that would be where a total stranger breaks in your window and rapes you. But what the witnesses testified to, our experts, was that the vast majority of sexual assault cases, 70, 80 percent, are people that know each other, and another majority are actually dating, like these two were. And so, it’s not abnormal to the medical community, but to the general community, it’s probably not their normal idea of what they would say a sex assault is,” West said.
West said during the argument, Navarro also choked the woman.
“She testified he choked her twice. . . and she lost consciousness. Somebody in the neighborhood, who wanted to remain anonymous, called 9-1-1 and told the police there was a woman screaming in the vehicle and so the officers showed up just as Navarro and the woman stepped outside the vehicle,” West said.
“She was telling the officers she just wanted to go home, so at the time, she wasn’t even making an outcry on the sexual assault, but she was visibly injured. You could see it on the bodycam. She had a swollen lip and could hardly talk, and she was crying and shaking,” West said.
The district attorney said the officers began asking questions, believing the situation to be a family violence assault.
West said when the woman told police Navarro forced her to perform oral sex and made her get into the vehicle’s back seat and tried to have intercourse with her and then choked her, the officers began asking more pointed questions.
“It’s really a sad situation, and one of the things I told the jury in the closing was thank goodness that the Del Rio Police Department is trained in how to handle these situations. They could have shown up and when she said, ‘I just want to go home,’ they could have just let her go, but instead they took very good care of her. They asked her a lot of questions, and then they found out what had happened and because of the way the family violence lifestyle is built on that cycle of shame and humiliation, she wasn’t even internalizing that what had happened to her was what other people would call a rape,” West said.
West said Navarro and the woman had been in a relationship for about three years, and she called the case “a heart-shattering example of a family violence case.”
“One of the other things she said on the video that was just devastating to us trying to help her, when they finally got out the entire story and they said, ‘Why didn’t you say this right away?’ They were wondering why that was not the first thing she described to them. And she said, “I didn’t think anybody would believe me’,” West said.
West said survivors need to understand that law enforcement officers are trained for this type of situation, and are ready to help.
“They took her for a SANE evaluation, and she had 44 bruises on her body, 20 of them on her face and head, extensive injuries around her eyes, nose and mouth, on her neck. The experts testified that she had seven different instances on her body of a medical injury called petechia, which is not a bruise, it is where the capillaries burst because of the pressure to the neck blocking the blood flow,” West said.
Navarro pleaded not guilty to the charges and asked for a trial.
The trial began Aug. 19 with jury selection, with opening statements on Tuesday morning and evidence presented until Thursday morning.
During the trial, Navarro testified on his own behalf, West said.
Closing statements were done late Thursday morning.
West said the case went to the jury at 12:22 p.m. on Thursday, and the jury returned with guilty verdicts at 2:30 p.m. Thursday.
West said the case went straight to the punishment phase, with the jury staying out for a little over an hour before returning with a recommendation.
West said she asked for 15 years, with Navarro’s defense attorney asking for the minimum of two years and five years.
“The jury came back with the maximum on the family violence at 20 years, and 30 years each on the sexual assaults, and to me that is the best verdict you could ask for, because that is the community saying, ‘You can’t do this in our community,” West said.
West said the law requires that the offenses be served concurrently.
West spoke highly of the woman who survived Navarro’s assaults, saying she has been able to begin putting the relationship in the past.
“She is brave and strong and faced tremendous obstacles because of this relationship. I believe she’s in a good place now,” West said.
West thanked members of her staff that assisted her with the case and the trial, including Assistant District Attorney Daniel Esquivel, Investigator Duane Maldonado and Victims Assistant Coordinator Debbie Garcia. West also credited “a thorough and professional” investigation by the Del Rio Police Department.
“They all did a fantastic job,” West said.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com.
