A 51-year-old Santa Ana restaurant cook has pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 years in prison for sexually assaulting three girls and a boy dating back to 1997, according to court records obtained Wednesday.
Javier Ortiz-Pichardo pleaded guilty Tuesday to five counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor, two counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor younger than 14 and two counts of continuous sexual abuse of a child. The crimes were committed in May 2002, January 2012, April 2003 and January 1997, according to court records.
The defendant received no custody credits under the plea deal.
When he was arrested in August 2018 police said one of the victim was a relative he was accused of molesting over a nearly 10-year period.
Pichardo met the boy in 1999, when the child was 7 years old, while working at the New China restaurant in Santa Ana, which closed in 2004, police said.
The boy’s family were regulars at the restaurant, and Pichardo is accused of molesting the victim in a bathroom at the eatery, police said.
The suspect befriended the family and would bring them food at no cost, according to police. At some point, the family trusted him enough to pick the boy up from school, police said.
The molestation stopped when the boy turned 14 and his family lost contact with Pichardo, police said.
When the victim was 26 in 2018 he saw Pichardo at a McDonald’s restaurant, prompting him to recall the years of alleged abuse, police said. He followed Pichardo out of the parking lot, jotted down his license plate number and called police.
In investigating the man’s allegations, detectives came across the other victims, all listed as Jane Does in the criminal complaint.
Detectives reopened a child annoyance case out of Costa Mesa in 2002 and another case out of Santa Ana in 2012 that were closed when authorities lacked enough evidence for charges, police said.