He was accused of raping woman at Fife motel. Jury found him guilty of a lesser charge
A man previously accused of robbing a woman at a Fife motel and sexually assaulting her at gunpoint was sentenced Friday to no further jail time after a jury found him not guilty of rape, robbery and burglary.
Pierce County prosecutors in December 2021 accused Mauricio Rodriguez Ayala of entering a motel room in May that year and pointing a revolver at the woman staying there, then taking $2,500 from her before sexually assaulting her at gunpoint and smoking methamphetamine in the room.
After a four-day jury trial that got underway March 23, jurors acquitted Ayala, 29, of the original charges brought against him. Jurors found him guilty of the lesser offense of third-degree theft, a gross misdemeanor.
Judge Angelica Williams sentenced him to time served, and Ayala was released from custody.
Fife Police Department began investigating May 7, 2021, after a woman contacted the front desk at the motel where she was staying and reported she’d been raped by a man she didn’t know, according to court records. The woman went to a hospital for a sexual assault forensic exam, and DNA results from the test later matched Ayala in a national database, prosecutors wrote in charging documents.
In a court filing, attorneys for Ayala from the Department of Assigned Counsel wrote that Ayala and the woman he’d been accused of assaulting exchanged messages and phone calls before the two arranged to meet up.
The lawyers planned to elicit testimony at trial showing that Ayala and the woman met through an online advertisement for sex, according to the filing. Records state the two exchanged contact information, including the woman’s room number, before he went to her motel.
