Tehachapi News

Keene resident arrested on rape and assault charges

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A Kern County man is accused of raping four University of San Francisco students after giving them alcohol until they passed out.

Ryan Kenneth Caskey, 21, was arrested by San Francisco police on Friday on suspicion of four counts of rape of an unconscious person and four counts of assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury, San Francisco police said.

Caskey is a resident of Keene, northwest of Tehachapi and southeast of Caliente. He attended Garces Memorial High School.

A family member declined comment Wednesday morning.

The rapes were separate incidents that happened between April 2008 to January, prosecutors said. Caskey plied the women with alcohol during parties and then raped them as they lay unconscious, according to prosecutors.

"As we've alleged, this defendant was a predator, essentially laying in wait to entrap his fellow classmates and attack them in the most vicious and despicable manner," San Francisco District Attorney Kamala D. Harris said in a news release.

One of the victims contacted university officials, who then contacted San Francisco police. Sex crimes detectives questioned Caskey and arrested him two days later, police said. Caskey was a ROTC member at the school but his commission was terminated after his arrest.

Caskey was in custody on $600,000 bail and was scheduled to be arraigned in San Francisco Superior Court on Wednesday morning, prosecutors said. The maximum penalty for each count of rape of an unconscious person is 8 years in prison.

San Francisco police are urging anyone else who may have been a victim of Caskey to contact them.