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Late La Mesa police officer Lauren Craven has been named as one of the victims of a Hollywood producer who has been sentenced to 146 years to life in prison.
David Brian Pearce, 43, was convicted of first-degree murder for the drug overdose deaths of a model and her friend in Los Angeles, along with charges that he sexually assaulted seven other women.
The Los Angeles Times and the New York Post reported that prosecutors acknowledged that Craven, a graduate of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, was among the sexual assault victims. According to the L.A. Times, the crime happened in February 2020 while she was a student.
Craven, 25, and a man were struck and killed Oct. 20 when she left her vehicle to assist him after a wreck on Interstate 8.
Craven was laid to rest Tuesday after a lengthy funeral procession in her honor; meanwhile one day after Wednesday’s sentencing in the Pearce case, another court hearing took place in San Diego, this time involving the officer’s accused killer.
Antonio Alcantar, the Navy police officer who allegedly drove drunk and killed Craven, along with De’Veonte Morris, 19, pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.
Alcantar, 38, however, has yet to be charged in Morris’ death. According to Deputy District Attorney Spencer Sharpe, the investigation into the motorist’s death continues “due to the complexity of the accident.”
Alcantar was hospitalized for injuries sustained in the crash and later arrested. The prosecutor said his blood-alcohol-level was measured at twice the legal limit more than an hour after the crash.
In Los Angeles, some of the surviving victims of Pearce, along with the loved ones of a model and her friend he was convicted of killing, appeared in court Wednesday or provided victim impact statements. They called him a con artist, a manipulator and a wolf.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Eleanor J. Hunter imposed the maximum sentence on Pearce saying he is “the worst kind of criminal.” About the labels the victims and their loved ones used to describe him, she added, “all of them apply to you.”
Jurors deliberated about 2 1/2 days before finding Pearce guilty Feb. 4 of the murder charges stemming from the deaths of model and aspiring actress Christy Giles, 24, and her friend Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, 26, who were taken to separate hospitals about two hours apart on Nov. 13, 2021.
Giles was already dead when she was taken to Southern California Hospital in Culver City, while Cabrales-Arzola, an architect, was taken to Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Hospital in critical condition. Her family took her off life support later that month.
The seven-man, five-woman jury also found Pearce guilty of three counts of forcible rape, two counts of sexual penetration by use of force and one count each of rape of an unconscious person and sodomy by use of force. The sexual assault charges involved crimes against seven women between 2007 and 2020.
Jurors also heard from five other women who alleged that they were sexually assaulted by Pearce in addition to the seven victims named in the sexual assault charges.
Craven’s father, David, had told NBC San Diego that his daughter’s drink was spiked, leading to a crime that required assistance from detectives and other members of law enforcement.
“I want to be that person for other women, and others, anybody in trouble that needs me,” he recalled her saying. “She decided right then and there, ‘I’m going to become a police officer.’”
One of the sexual assault victims told the judge that Pearce is a “predator” whose “actions have caused irreversible harm to so many,” and said he should never have a chance to walk free.
Another said Pearce’s actions have “changed my life forever,” adding that “no sentence can un-do the harm.”
Pearce, who denied sexually assaulting the seven women and giving the two women the drugs that killed them, has remained behind bars since he was arrested in December 2021.
City News Service contributed to this report.
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