A 13-year-old girl, drugged and sexually assaulted as she lay unconscious. A 12-year-old left vomiting in another room as the attacker videotaped the assault. And later, a parent’s frantic call to paramedics as the 13-year-old goes into cardiac arrest.
Prosecutors on Wednesday detailed these three horrifying scenes that they said took place in an apartment in Park Ridge on Monday night.
Jada “Jay” Saenz, 19, is accused of using two teenage boys to lure the girls to his apartment at 454 S. Lincoln Ave. on Monday, drugging them with tanquilizer-spiked alcohol, then videotaping his sexual assault of the 13-year-old girl.
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Saenz, a bank employee and a Roosevelt University student, was charged Wednesday with three counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault, two counts of aggravated battery, one count of possession of child pornography and one count of manufacturing child pornography. Bond was set at $500,000.
Police said they found more videos in the apartment, including one that depicted Saenz and another person having sex with an unidentified unconscious girl.
A friend of Saenz’s, Jordan Arnos, also 19 and of Park Ridge, was charged with one count of obstruction of justice for allegedly trying to help Saenz destroy videotaped evidence. Bond for Arnos, of 1535 Lundergan Ave., was set at $20,000.
A steady parade of cars cruised past Saenz’s house Wednesday, with drivers gaping at the building owned by Saenz’s mother, as residents of the block rushed in and out of their homes.
“There are a lot of teenage girls who live (on this block). It’s sick,” said a neighbor who did not want her name used. “It’s a shame, these kids can’t trust anybody.”
A friend of Saenz, a fellow 1992 graduate of Maine South High School in Park Ridge, said Saenz never behaved strangely or kept suspicious material around the garden apartment.
“He was a good friend,” said Christopher Babula, 19, of Harwood Heights, who has known Saenz for five years. “In high school, whenever I needed someone to talk to, he was there . . . He was quiet but he was decent.”
Babula had gone out with Saenz and some other friends Saturday night. The group ordered a pizza and watched a rented video, “Ace Ventura,” at Babula’s house.
Saenz was a 1988 graduate of Lincoln Junior High School, about a block from his home, where Principal James Blouch remembered Saenz as “a good student.”
“I actually had some pleasant times with him,” said Blouch, who was assistant principal at the time. The school is assisting police in the investigation.
Cook County Assistant State’s Atty. Cathy Crowley said Monday’s incident began when Saenz offered money to two boys, ages 13 and 15, if they would find young girls for him.
The boys then brought the two girls to Saenz’s apartment, where he gave them beer and hard liquor spiked with the tranquilizer Xanax, Crowley said.
After the girls passed out, Crowley said, Saenz allegedly picked up the 13-year-old and took her into another room, where he sexually assaulted her several times as a videotape camera recorded it. Afterward, he found the 12-year-old vomiting and became concerned, then called the other girl’s father to come and get them, Crowley said.
The father took the girls home but later called paramedics, who arrived to find the 13-year-old in cardiac arrest, Crowley said. Both girls were treated at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge and later released, authorities said.
Crowley said Arnos arrived at the home before the father, and after the girls left, Saenz and Arnos took a “journey across the city” to get rid of evidence, including the beer and tranquilizers. The two also unspooled videotape and dipped it in soda pop in an attempt to destroy it, Crowley said.
Arnos, a student in electrical engineering at the University of Southern California who also had attended Maine South, told police Saenz had bragged before about videotaping sexual encounters, according to Crowley. Neither man has a criminal history.
Saenz’s laywer, Ralph Meczyk, had argued for a lower bond or electronic home monitoring for Saenz.
“He’s not charged with a murder. Both girls are out of the hospital and apparently doing well,” Meczyk said after Wednesday’s bond hearing, held in the Skokie branch of the Cook County Circuit Court. “We can’t lose sight that this is not a murder case. We don’t have any bodies here.”
But Associate Judge Joseph H. Romano, in setting the bond, said “the alleged crime is so heinous and the facts presented to me here are so serious” that neither home monitoring nor a low bond was justified.