A 26-year-old Santa Ana man was sentenced to 27 years to life behind bars for luring several boys into his apartment with video games, and sexually assaulting them, authorities said Friday.
Edwin Damean Echeverria pleaded guilty on Oct. 22, 2018, to 16 felony counts of lewd acts upon a child under 14, five counts of lewd acts upon a child and three counts of oral copulation of a minor, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
At a court hearing on Friday, Echeverria admitted to sexually assaulting 10 boys, seven of them were under the age of 14. Prosecutors said the case was one of the largest child molestation cases in terms of victims in recent Santa Ana history.
“It was really just how many victims that he reached in really fairly…it wasn’t a couple of months, but in a short amount of time he reached a large volume of victims which I think is very unusual,” Senior Deputy District Attorney Lexie Elliott Prosecutor told KTLA.
Investigators said the crimes first came to light in 2014 when Echeverria lived in a neighborhood on Lyon Street and began targeting children and teenagers.
Echeverria was sentenced to 27 years to life in state prison and mandatory sex offender registration.