2 California men booked in separate Salt Lake rape cases


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SALT LAKE CITY — Two California men who were charged with rape after the testing of rape kits were located over the weekend and booked into the Salt Lake County Jail.

Robert Menchaca, 24, of Bakersfield, California, was charged in December with rape and object rape, both first-degree felonies, for an assault in 2013, according to charging documents.

Majid Sayad, 41, of Northridge, California, was also charged in December with rape, a first-degree felony, and forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony, for an incident in 2004, court documents state.

Salt Lake police say the separate cases each came about because of DNA testing and rape kits that were collected.

Menchaca is accused of going to a Salt Lake motel room on Sept. 30, 2013, with a woman and another couple. The women had just met the men, the charges state. Menchaca began "coming on" to one of the women who did not want to have sex with him and tried to "hold him off," charging documents state.

On Feb. 21, 2004, Sayad allegedly raped a woman he had met that night in a Salt Lake bar, the charges state.

Both women had DNA samples collected after their alleged assaults.

Last week, Gov. Gary Herbert signed HB200 into law. It requires all rape kits that a victim wants tested to be submitted to the Utah State Crime Lab.

During the recently completely legislative session, Utah State Crime Lab Director Jay Henry said half of the 2,760 estimated unsubmitted rape kits in the state have now been processed, with the rest expected to be completed in about a year and a half.

So far, the kits have led to 131 matches in the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, a database of offenders convicted of certain types of crimes. An additional 41 matches were made in an FBI database, Henry said.

Help for people in abusive relationships can be found by contacting YWCA, Women in Jeopardy, 801-537-8600, or the Domestic Violence Hotline, 800-897-LINK

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