A 21-year-old woman pleaded not guilty Wednesday to committing a series of carjackings in Irvine, Costa Mesa and Tustin.
Jocelyn Cano of Santa Ana is charged with three counts of carjacking and one count each of attempted carjacking, assault with a deadly weapon with force likely to produce great bodily injury and criminal threats, all felonies. She also faces sentence-enhancing allegations of using a dangerous or deadly weapon and inflicting great bodily harm.
Cano, who was arrested March 12 at her Santa Ana residence, has a “lengthy criminal history” of auto theft, burglary and narcotic arrests, according to Tustin police Lt. Robert Wright.
Cano allegedly robbed a motorist on the Corona Del Mar (73) Freeway near the Fairview Road off-ramp about 6 p.m. on March 9, according to Costa Mesa police Lt. Greg Scott.
In that incident, a 27-year-old Huntington Beach resident said a knife- wielding suspect smashed in the driver-side window of his 2011 Toyota Prius while he was stopped in traffic on the northbound side of the freeway, Scott said. The suspect ordered the victim out of the car and drove away with the vehicle, Scott said.
Costa Mesa police found an abandoned Volvo S80 with a flat right-front tire nearby, which had been stolen minutes earlier from an Irvine motorist in a parking lot in the 17000 block of Von Karman Avenue, Scott said. The Volvo was stolen by a knife-wielding suspect in the same manner as the one in Costa Mesa, Scott said.
The attempted carjacking occurred in Tustin about 7 p.m. March 9 in the 3090 block of Edinger Avenue.
Cano is due back in court March 26 for a pretrial hearing.
— City News Service