Denver man who targeted women waiting for rides jailed for 290 years

A Denver man was sentenced Friday to 290 years to life in prison for targeting women and falsely posing as the driver of the vehicles they had requested on ride-hailing apps in order to kidnap and sexually assault them, prosecutors said.

John Pastor-Mendoza, 43, was convicted in October of kidnapping 12 women, sexually assaulting two of them and attempting to sexually assault seven others, Denver District Attorney John Walsh said in a statement. Pastor-Mendoza was also found guilty of one count of robbery.

“Pastor-Mendoza victimized 12 women in a calculated, cruel and contemptible series of crimes over four years,” Walsh said, describing the judge’s “severe sentence” as “entirely appropriate.”

“We should all be grateful for the courage of Pastor-Mendoza’s victims, who came forward and testified at trial to ensure that Pastor-Mendoza will no longer have the opportunity to harm our community.”

An attorney for Pastor-Mendoza did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But local news reported that Pastor-Mendoza maintained his innocence at his sentencing on Friday, despite DNA evidence implicating him as the perpetrator in at least three of the cases.

Investigators said that between 2018 and 2022, Pastor-Mendoza sought out seemingly intoxicated women outside clubs and bars in downtown Denver. The women told investigators that they had been waiting for the ride they had called on apps such as Lyft and Uber.

Several women did not recall getting into a car and only realized that they had been sexually assaulted when they woke up in a stranger’s bed with no underwear or phone, according to the arrest warrant for Pastor-Mendoza. Others told investigators that they regained consciousness in the back seat of a car as a man raped or assaulted them.

In one case, a woman was separated from her friends after entering a white car instead of the blue sedan she had been assigned in an app. Her friends had asked the driver to wait while they gathered the rest of their group to leave, but the man had driven off instead, investigators said.

Pastor-Mendoza had worked as a driver for Lyft, but a company spokesperson told The Washington Post when he was charged that he was likely providing rides off the books, as the company had no record of them being scheduled on its platform. Pastor-Mendoza had never worked for Uber, a spokesman said.

Police searching Pastor-Mendoza’s home found a woman’s bank card and a box with 18 cellphones that they traced back to the women, according to a search warrant obtained by Denver7. The warrant stated that police also found tranquilizers, amphetamines, muscle relaxers, hallucinogenic drugs and marijuana concentrate at Pastor-Mendoza’s home.

Outside court on Friday, several of the victims stood arm in arm to speak to reporters. One woman, Rachel Perry, described their ordeal as surviving “a monster.”

“He preyed on what he thought were weak women,” Perry told reporters. “He found out we are not weak women. We are strong, we fought, and we fought hard.”