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SALT LAKE CITY — The Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office has filed charges against a man who investigators believe participated in a violent home invasion robbery in 2017.
Jorge Rodriguez-Gutierrez, 23, who is currently incarcerated in the Salt Lake County Jail, was charged Wednesday in 3rd District Court with three counts of aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary, first-degree felonies; and theft, a third-degree felony.
On June 26, 2017, police say five men pounded on a door near 1000 North and 1900 West claiming to be police officers before kicking the door in.
“They were all wearing gray and black hoodies, had bandanas over their faces and they all had handguns,” according to charging documents.
A resident told police the group claimed they were looking for a safe and money and threatened to come back and kill the occupants if they called police, the charges state. Jewelry and cellphones were taken.
One of the intruders hit a woman in the head with the handle of a gun, causing the gun to fire, according to police. A bullet hole was found in the headboard of a bed.
When the shot was fired, all of the intruders ran from the house and left behind a backpack. DNA evidence was collected from items inside the backpack, which detectives used to identify Rodriguez-Gutierrez, according to the charges.
In 2019, Rodriguez-Gutierrez was convicted of object rape and ordered to serve a year in jail. He was also being held Wednesday on a no bail warrant from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Police were able to identify one other juvenile suspect from the home invasion using fingerprint evidence, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in 3rd District Court. Investigators noted that the juvenile and his adult brother “were suspects in several residential burglaries during the summer of 2017 in the Rose Park area of Salt Lake City.”
The brother, who is a person of interest in the home invasion, is also a suspect in at least two hit-and-run cases from 2018 and 2019, the warrant states. As of Wednesday, police had not been able to locate the brother and believe “he is well aware of the warrants against him, and ... he is actively attempting to evade capture by law enforcement.”
