A 25-year-old man who raped a teenage girl in Tacoma and then sexually assaulted another girl while DNA testing from the first incident was pending was sentenced Friday to three years to life in prison.
Carlos Manuel Mora pleaded guilty to third-degree rape in the Sept. 15, 2020, rape of a 15-year-old girl and second-degree sexual assault with sexual motivation for a Jan. 22, 2021, incident with a 13-year-old girl. According to court records, the assaults occurred after Mora began talking to the girls on social media.
Investigators received the results of a forensic examination of the sexual abuse that was conducted in the first incident 13 months after the investigation was completed. The examination was sent to one of the Washington State Patrol's crime labs. According to the Washington state attorney general's office, a backlog of more than 10,000 sexual abuse kits in the state was cleared last October.
Pierce County Superior Court Judge Edmund Murphy sentenced Mora to 41 months to life in prison, which was in line with prosecutors' recommendation. It is an indeterminate sentence, meaning Mora must serve a certain amount of time before he is eligible to petition the Indeterminate Sentence Review Board for release.
The sentence included a 24-month enhancement because the second-degree assault was sexually motivated. The standard sentence for defendants charged in similar cases is 13 to 17 months to life in prison.
Mora will have to register as a sex offender. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
The suspect was originally charged with second-degree rape for the incident in Tacoma and second-degree rape of a child for the subsequent incident. Assistant District Attorney Adam Roberts wrote in a court document that the charges were amended as part of plea negotiations and in consideration of the facts of the case.
Roberts said the resolution avoided a potential evidentiary problem in the second-degree rape incident and that the mother of the victim in that attack supported the resolution of the case. He noted that the mother of the second victim did not support the outcome of the plea agreement because she felt the amount of prison time prosecutors were recommending was not enough.
In the first incident, Mora was driving the 15-year-old girl in his car when it broke down in South Tacoma, near 64th and South Warner Streets. According to the probable cause document, they walked into an alley and Mora choked the girl unconscious, then raped her when she woke up.
She called for help and was driven to St. Joseph Medical Center, where she underwent a forensic examination for sexual abuse. Officers from the Tacoma Police Department responded to the hospital.
The second incident was investigated by Puyallup police. State police were called to a man who was allegedly masturbating in his vehicle in a parking lot. When police arrived, they found Mora with his pants around his ankles and a 13-year-old girl in the seat next to him. In an interview with police, the girl said Mora had forced her to perform a sex act on him.
Investigators received the results of the first victim's forensic exam on October 27, 2021. It showed that some of the DNA present was very likely Mora's. Prosecutors filed charges against him two weeks later.
