Full Notification

Police detectives arrested a man Sunday morning in connection with the sexual assault of a high school-aged jogger in Palo Alto on March 28. On Wednesday, March 28, 2018 at about 1:47 p.m., our 24-hour dispatch center received a 9-1-1 call from a passerby reporting an assault that had just occurred near the intersection of Arastradero Road and Deer Creek Road. Officers responded to the area immediately and located a high school-aged juvenile female victim in the greenbelt near that intersection. Paramedics from the Palo Alto Fire Department transported the victim to a local hospital for treatment. The preliminary investigation showed that the victim had been jogging westbound on the pedestrian/bicycle path that runs parallel to Arastradero Road (on the north side of the roadway). The suspect emerged from the greenbelt and pulled the victim off of the path, placed a gun to her head, and sexually assaulted her. The suspect fled the scene on foot, and the victim flagged down a passerby to call for help. To view the original news release we distributed about the assault, click here: https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civica/press/display.asp?layout=1&Entry=1599. During the ensuing investigation, detectives from the Palo Alto Police Department developed information identifying the suspect as 29-year-old Eduardo Antonio Chavarria-Diaz, a resident of Richmond. Detectives also developed information linking him to a similar assault that occurred in Oakland on March 4 in the jurisdiction of the East Bay Regional Park District Police Department. On Saturday, April 7 detectives from the Palo Alto Police Department obtained an arrest warrant for Chavarria-Diaz. On Sunday, April 8, at about 11:00 a.m., detectives from the Palo Alto Police Department and investigators from the East Bay Regional Park District Police Department arrested Chavarria-Diaz without incident at a residence in the 100 block of South 9th Street in Richmond. Police booked Chavarria-Diaz into the Santa Clara County Main Jail pursuant to the arrest warrant, which charged him with assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping, and sexual penetration by force (all felonies, and all as a result of the crime that occurred in Palo Alto on March 28). A booking photograph of the suspect is attached to this release (note: the booking photo has been removed pursuant to AB994 as of November 2023). Additional charges for the crime in Oakland may be forthcoming. Our detectives are continuing to investigate to determine if the suspect may be responsible for any other unsolved crimes. Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call our 24-hour dispatch center at 650-329-2413. Anonymous tips can be e-mailed to [email protected] or sent via text message or voice mail to 650-383-8984. Tips can also be submitted anonymously through our free mobile app, downloadable at www.bit.ly/PAPD-AppStore or www.bit.ly/PAPD-GooglePlay.