Two men are in custody in Madison, Wisconsin, after witnesses and surveillance footage revealed they assaulted a transgender woman on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, according to a complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court on Tuesday.
According to the complaint, the unnamed woman told police on their arrival at the scene, “These guys raped me, they tried to f**king kill me,” WKOW reports.
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Yorfred Gutierrez, 31, and Arturo Santos Albujas, 27, are each charged with attempted second-degree sexual assault and battery, as well as strangulation, suffocation, and false imprisonment as a party to a crime.
Neither the victim nor the alleged assailants are associated with the University of Wisconsin, the complaint states. Both men were arrested at the scene.
While being held in a squad car and before he was told why he was being detained, Santos Albujas told an officer in Spanish, “I am not gay, for you to be involving me with this weird stuff.”
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He added, “I have a wife and kids,” Wisconsin State Journal reported.
The victim told police she met the men around 3:00 or 4:00 am Saturday morning on State Street, a main thoroughfare populated with bars and restaurants leading to the University of Wisconsin campus.
The woman, who is fluent in Spanish, said the men asked her to walk with them to their boat at a campus pier on Lake Mendota. She said she was reluctant at first but accompanied them. On the pier, she realized there was no boat and tried to leave. She was met with the assault.
An interview with the victim, witness accounts, and video surveillance footage reveal a brutal attack.
“The punches hurt enough that it made it hard for her to breathe,” the complaint says.
The woman said she tried to flee the scene but was dragged along the pier toward the edge before Santos Albujas grabbed her by the neck and ripped out her hair extensions, throwing them in the lake. Both men then began tearing her clothes off, pulling her skirt, underwear, bra, and top from her body.
Santos Albujas punched and slapped her repeatedly on her bare ribs, thighs, and backside, the complaint states.
The woman described how Gutierrez then got on the ground behind her and put her neck in a chokehold between his forearm and bicep, while wrapping his legs around her body to prevent her from struggling. She said she couldn’t breathe and was afraid she was going to die.
With the woman restrained, Gutierrez told Santos Albujas he could perform sexual acts on her. He tried to force the victim over to his alleged accomplice to perform a sex act on him and to get her to touch Santos Albujas’ genitals.
“We could literally kill you, throw you in the lake and just leave,” the woman quoted Gutierrez as saying.
Two witnesses who called police added to the victim’s account.
One saw the men “being very handsy towards and with other females on State St.” in front of a bar about 45 to 60 minutes before the assault, adding they observed Gutierrez holding the victim by the neck toward the end of the pier with Santos Albujas following behind. Both witnesses said they saw the men physically attack the victim, including dragging her by the hair and legs, ripping at her clothes, and hitting her repeatedly.
Surveillance video shows the victim on the ground with Santos Albujas wrapping his hands around her top and bra and pulling, causing her body to lurch toward him as she curled into a fetal position while Gutierrez pulled on her lower legs in the opposite direction, the complaint states, explaining that, “During this the victim’s skirt was pulled down and her top was pulled up exposing her naked butt, her genitalia and naked chest.”
The victim said she did not perform any sex act on the men and made it clear she did not consent to any of their actions.
The woman was transported to a local hospital for medical treatment, complaining of pain in her ribs. Officers reported they saw abrasions on both of her knees and an open wound on her left elbow.
As officers prepared to transport Gutierrez to the Dane County Jail, one observed dried blood on his hands and ripped or torn calluses on his palms. Officers also observed dried blood under Gutierrez’s left thumbnail and an open cut on his right tricep.
In an interview with police on Sunday, Gutierrez maintained that “nothing happened.” When asked if he touched the victim, Gutierrez said, “We were like joking around, ok let’s go let’s go and that’s it.”
He variously denied that he or Santos Albujas attacked the victim, or didn’t remember what happened, adding that he didn’t know Santos Albujas well.
“We were just talking and, like, joking,” he said of the men’s interactions with the victim. “I knew that he was a man; we were just talking.”
Santos Albujas later declined to speak with police without a lawyer present.
The men each face a maximum of 20 years in prison on the attempted sexual assault charges, as well as six years on each of the strangulation and false imprisonment charges.
A court commissioner set Gutierrez’s bond at $75,000 and Santos Albujas’ at $100,000. Both men remain in custody. They appear in court for preliminary hearings on September 8.
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