Carjacking suspect released

Deepa Bharath

COSTA MESA -- An 18-year-old Santa Ana man arrested on suspicion of

carjacking and assaulting a woman in a South Coast Plaza parking lot

Monday night was released Wednesday because the Orange County district

attorney declined to file charges, officials said.

Jose Rosario Torres was arrested in Santa Ana by Costa Mesa police

after a 50-year-old Corona woman identified him as her attacker, police

said.

The woman said a man pointed a gun at her and later pistol-whipped her

and drove off in her car, police added.

Santa Ana police found the woman’s 1999 GMC Yukon abandoned in their

city. Witnesses told them that two men left the Yukon and climbed into a

Lincoln Towncar.

Costa Mesa police Lt. Dale Birney said the district attorney was

skeptical about witness accounts that the man who got into the Towncar

was Torres.

But the district attorney on Wednesday decided not to file charges

against Torres for lack of evidence, said Tori Richards, a spokeswoman

for the Orange County district attorney’s office.

“We’re not commenting on the evidence or about whether he did it or

not,” she said. “We’re not comfortable filing charges because we needed

more. We just felt what we had was not enough.”

Because the victim identified Torres as the alleged carjacker, Costa

Mesa police officers believed they had their suspect, Birney said.

“When the victim tells us that’s the guy who put a gun to my face, we

have to take him in, if not for anything else for public safety,” he

said.

Birney said the woman’s car is being processed for fingerprints and

other evidence by Santa Ana crime scene investigators.

Costa Mesa police will continue investigating the case, he said.