Vista child grabber gets four years prison

A 60-year-old homeless man admitted trying to kidnap one small child and then beating up her teenaged sister who had intervened. In a plea deal, Alan Ray Sasseen will get four years in California State prison.

A prosecutor dismissed two other felonies, child abuse and making criminal threat. There were two other, active criminal cases for Sasseen, battery and indecent exposure, and time for those offenses will run concurrently with the four-year term.

Sasseen assaulted two children, 12 and 16 years old, after they left a public library in Vista, on February 17, 2018.

On the plea form, Sasseen admitted: “I did forcibly and by means of instilling fear, unlawfully attempt to take LB to another place, and LB was under 14 years of age at the time. And did unlawfully commit an assault upon JO by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury.”

Court records show that an attorney for Sasseen was considering a mental illness defense. The minutes of the court hearing on November 16, 2018, when the plea deal was decided upon, state: “Defendant withdraws his previously entered Not guilty by reason of insanity plea. Therefore, the order for defendant to undergo (mental) examination is vacated. Doctors have been notified.”

In 1979, when Sasseen was 20 years old, he was arrested in San Diego for shooting at an occupied dwelling, vandalism, possessing hashish, and exhibiting a deadly firearm; he pleaded guilty to brandishing a firearm as a misdemeanor and got 12 days jail and three years unsupervised probation.

In 2003, when he was 44 years old, Sasseen was arrested for DUI. He pleaded guilty as a misdemeanor and got unsupervised probation. He violated probation 9 months later.

In 2006, when he was 47 years old, Sasseen got another DUI; he was sentenced to four days jail and four years unsupervised probation. Four months later he violated probation.

In 2015 he was 57 years old when arrested for battery and making loud noise. He was in jail for a year and half and pleaded guilty to making unreasonable noise as a misdemeanor. Within weeks of his release he violated his unsupervised probation.

In early 2018 he was arrested for battery and indecent exposure; Sasseen must have been released on his own recognizance, because he was at liberty two weeks later when he committed his most recent crime, that is, attacking the two little girls leaving the library.

A report in his court file stated: “Mr. Sasseen was scored on the Static-99R, which is an actuarial measure of risk for sexual offense recidivism. This instrument has been shown to be a moderate predictor of sexual re-offense potential. (In a 2016 recidivism study in California, it accurately predicted risk of re-offense about 77 percent of the time.)” Sasseen’s score was two, which according to the report put his risk level at “average.”