The young woman’s memory of what happened to her in the parking garage of a Northwest cathedral was hazy, but she remembered enough to tell police she had been raped.
The extent of the New Year’s Day attack became brutally clear when police found surveillance camera footage that captured video of two men raping her as she was apparently too drunk even to stand upright on her own.
The Metropolitan Police Department announced Sunday that those two men are Matthew Maldonado, 26, and Nicholas Shultz, 21, whose last name was also spelled “Schultz” in court records. Both have been charged with second-degree sexual assault and are due for preliminary hearings in D.C. Superior Court on Tuesday.
The sexual assault happened in a parking garage next to the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in the early morning hours of Jan. 1. The woman had gone to Midtown Club, a bar located around the block from the parking garage, to celebrate on New Year’s Eve, police wrote in court documents after interviewing the woman. There she told officers she ran into Mr. Schultz and Mr. Maldonado, whom she knew from working at a Temple Hills martial arts studio. The woman was too drunk to drive at the end of the night and left the club with the two men under the impression that one of them would drive her to the home of a colleague where she could sleep, court documents say.
Instead the group walked into the parking garage, where both of the men raped her, then left her passed out on the concrete to be found by a passer-by who heard her cries for help and called police.
Police did not write in the court documents how long the assault lasted but described in a five-page affidavit the details the woman could recall as well as what was seen on the surveillance camera.
The woman recalled Mr. Schultz pushing her to her knees and forcing her to give him oral sex. After that, she said he raped her on the ground. Before Mr. Schultz left, the woman recalled him saying, “I’m sorry. I’m a sick bastard,” court records say.
The surveillance video showed Mr. Maldonado raping the woman first. After several minutes, Mr. Maldonado stopped and walked away and Mr. Schultz continued the assault, court records say. Multiple times throughout the ordeal, the woman fell to the ground, at one point striking her head and losing consciousness.
The men, who live at the same house in Clinton, are being held in jail pending a preliminary hearing. No one could be reached for comment at their home and attorneys listed as representing them could not be reached Monday.
In an interview several days before the assault, D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier stressed concern over a growing number of sexual assaults committed by acquaintances that are being reported in the District. She said the department is trying to work more to educate both men and women about how to both prevent and report the crime.
“It’s not just educating young women to protect themselves and be careful with people that they don’t really know that are acquaintances,” she said. “Young men, I don’t think some of them realize that having sex with a person who is too intoxicated to give consent is really criminal assault.”
• Andrea Noble can be reached at anoble@washingtontimes.com.
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