Man arrested for brutal sexual assaults has a long criminal record
Kevin Lopez-Altan, the man arrested March 22 for two brutal sexual assaults in Annandale has a lengthy arrest record, has been in court multiple times, but never served time in jail.
Court records show he was arrested on Oct. 3, 2023, for attempting to disarm a law enforcement officer’s stun gun, a felony. On Aug. 15, 2021, he was arrested for assaulting a law enforcement officer.
He pled guilty in those cases, but court documents show the judge’s ruling as “nolle prosequi,” meaning the prosecutor declined to pursue the case.
“Any decision to dismiss a charge is based on the individual fact pattern of the case and can depend on a wide range of factors,” said Laura Birnbaum of the Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney.
In 2022, charges in the Oct. 3, 2023, arrest were dropped after a judge denied the commonwealth attorney’s many motions to continue the case, Birnbaum said. “With no witnesses present, the judge would not allow us to continue the prosecution.”
That case involved resisting arrest after Lopez-Altan was charged with assault and battery. The victim was his mother. The family didn’t want to move forward; they wanted him to get help for his “considerable mental health issues,” Birnbaum said.
Related story: Man arrested for two brutal sexual assaults in Annandale
Lopez-Altan entered a plea agreement in Fairfax County’s Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, she said. Some charges from that incident, including the assault on law enforcement, were dismissed as part of the agreement, which sought to get the defendant appropriate mental health treatment.
As part of that agreement, Lopez-Altan pleaded no contest to the domestic assault and battery charges and agreed to complete a mental health evaluation and follow any treatment recommendations. If he maintains good behavior, the agreement said, the charges would be dropped; if not, he would be sentenced.
The case stemming from the Aug. 15, 2021, arrest also wasn’t continued by the judge as there were no witnesses present.
“During the preliminary hearing, we wanted to move the trial to another date,” Birnbaum said, “but the judge said try it now or drop the charges. With no witnesses, it’s impossible to put on a case.”
There is also a bench warrant for Lopez-Altan that shows the progression of an earlier set of charges dating from a Sept. 15, 2021, incident. Each time this case came up – all the way through Nov. 7, 2022 – the judge called for an evaluation to determine whether Lopez-Altan is competent to stand trial.
Lopez-Altan had also been arrested in recent years for malicious wounding, grand larceny, disorderly conduct, and public intoxication, according to a records search, but it is not clear if those arrests are related to the previous incidents or are separate incidents.
He was arrested last week for two brutal sexual assaults. In one case, he forced his way into an Annandale business and held the owner, a 59-year-old woman, captive for hours while he repeatedly assaulted her. The next day, he assaulted a 20-year-old student on the Annandale Campus of Northern Virginia Community College.
He was charged with several counts of rape, sodomy, object sex penetration by force, abduction with the intent to defile, strangulation, and burglary to enter a building for the purpose of rape.
“The current charges against the defendant are extremely serious and will be handled in a manner befitting the facts of the case,” Birnbaum said.
Lopez-Altan was arraigned in the Fairfax County General District Court on March 25. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for July 2, 2024.
So they let him out so he could destroy two women’s lives — what do you want to bet the milquetoast legal system will let him out to do it again. what a world we live in.
This perpetrator should have been convicted years ago based on wrap sheet in story. Thank you Annandale Today for your work on this story. Also, a BIG Thank You to all the Fairfax voters that supported re-electing our commonwealth attorney in a job he refuses to do …. “judge’s ruling as “nolle prosequi,” meaning the prosecutor declined to pursue the case.”
As a result of the commonwealth attorney’s non-action and the voters that continue to support him, the perpetrator got to hurt more people. As often said, elections have consequences.
Did he ever get a psych eval? If he had gotten treatment for his mental illness I wonder if this would have happened. But Reagan closed all the mental hospitals without providing the community alternatives promised and now they all live on our streets.
The Community Mental Health Act was the law that closed mental hospitals in favor of outpatient clinics that never opened. It passed Congress in 1963, when Kennedy was president.
Don’t blame Reagan. Closing most of the asylums in favor of keeping the insane at home was popular. Having a dangerous person involuntarily commited became almost impossible. People were told that as long as their relatives took their meds everything would be fine.
Dude that was 40 years ago. This guy should have been put away for the multiple felonies he has committed. Time and again it has been shown that The Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney’s office is light on crime.
Cannot prosecute with no witness
Perpetrator pled guilty per the story. All the commonwealth attorney had to do was his job with the felony attempt on disarmament of the police officer, who is a witness. However the commonwealth attorney chose not to do that on the community’s part (his remit/ job), nor did the perpetrator’s mother want to press charges (what mother wants to prosecute their child, even if they are dangerous to the family and community). That incident combined with the other offenses noted in the good report by Annandale Today make it clear the perpetrator is a real threat to the community – regardless of mental issues – and should have been removed from society for treatment or incarceration, but that did not happen due to choices by the commonwealth attorney. The assaults on the two women happened because of the lack of prior prosecution. Again, a reminder the choice voters made to both elect & re-elect the commonwealth attorney have real consequences.
Shame on everyone who contributed to the non-conviction of this monstrous criminal – prosecutors, judges, attorneys, police, his family.
My heart goes out to the victims.
The police are not at fault. Who knows about the family. The others you mentioned, agreed.
Thank you Annandale Today for this excellent reporting of a hyper-local issue.
I’m very reassured by the events reported on in this article because they clearly demonstrate that at the end of the day reality supersedes labels and ideology.
Call it whatever you want. Social Justice Reform; Criminal Justice Reform; Informal Reparations for Centuries of Systemic Racism (all of which I believe are accurate statements and worthy of support); whatever you call it, the results of recent changes in laws that reduce the penalties for committing crime; and the results of electing prosecutors who to their credit clearly state their priority is addressing systemic inequities in Fairfax County’s criminal justice system instead of the same old failed policies focused on keeping law-abiding people safe from crime (both non-violent and violent) will by necessity result in increased crime.
But looking at this reality with steely-eyed cold acceptance, it shows that the changes the citizens of Fairfax County voted for are taking effect.
As the old saying goes, you cannot change the world and make it a better place, or make an omelette, without breaking a few eggs.
It’s an old saying because it’s an elemental truth that has stood the test of time.
You think women getting kidnapped and violently raped over several hours by a career violent criminal is “breaking a few eggs?” I
I also offer in the spirit of sincere responsiveness to those recent commenters who have complained the Annandale Today’s regular (weekly?) posts on the crimes reported to have occurred in this local area have gotten too long to fully comprehend and appreciate, proposed changes to address this concern.
My main proposal is to split the one list of crimes into two lists. One list would be of violent and serious crimes (hopefully the much shorter list); and the other list would be of minor nonviolent crimes.
Second, while less important, I think it would help if some of the crimes were labeled using more modern language appropriate for the world we live in today.
For example, private sector entities including retail stores and grocery stores do not label the financial losses they allegedly suffer through theft by desperate customers or employees as “shoplifting” on their financial statements.
[I use the word “allegedly” because my friends who should know assure me the stores are reimbursed by big greedy insurance companies and do not incur losses from “shoplifting” when all is said and done.]
Instead, the accountants for these private businesses record these alleged losses under the category of “shrinkage.”
Honestly, one way to modernize the crime reporting on this site and reduce the increasingly heated rhetoric on this topic would be to adopt the actual terminology used by the alleged victims of these nonviolent crimes.
Finally, I think it is worth noting that while I don’t often agree with many elected officials, I can understand how well meaning and caring elected officials can appear by sharing their view of reality, which is that some people who increase “retail shrinkage” do so because they are simply trying to find a way to feed their families without resorting to more desperate measures because capitalism has failed them and their families.
Make crime seem less bad by dividing it and censoring it based on Newspeak badness categories? I’m in!
His own mother was a victim of assault & battery, but refused to press charges hoping he would get help for his‘considerable mental health issues’.
No charges, no victim witness, no case.
Chop off this evil doer’s arms and legs without anesthesia and then tattoo “Rapist” on his forehead and put him out on Little River Turnpike.
I’m so sad for what happened to the women and their families. They were horribly violated and in one day it changed their life forever.