A Sacramento County jury convicted Lorenzo Deboy Davis on Thursday of three counts of forcible rape, three counts of forcible oral copulation, robbery, burglary and assault charges tied to a pair of brutal 2021 attacks on college-age women living alone in the La Riviera area east of Sacramento. Prosecutors say DNA evidence tied him directly to both crimes, and he now faces a maximum sentence of 180 years and eight months to life in prison.
According to the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office, Davis specifically targeted college-aged women living alone in La Riviera. The first attack unfolded on Nov. 12, 2021, when Davis pushed his way into a woman's apartment as she was unloading groceries, prosecutors say. What followed, per the DA's office, was an hours-long ordeal in which Davis repeatedly forced the woman to shower in an apparent attempt to destroy DNA evidence between assaults.
The woman eventually got away and managed to alert employees and customers at a nearby liquor store, prosecutors say, at which point Davis fled the area. As reported by The Sacramento Bee, that escape proved critical to eventually connecting Davis to a second attack on another woman in the same neighborhood.
A Second Victim Fights Back
In the second attack, the victim tried to fight Davis off and scratched his face, leaving his DNA under her fingernails, the district attorney's office says. She ultimately escaped by jumping from a second-story stairwell, sustaining minor injuries in the fall, per the same account.
That decision to fight back turned out to be pivotal to the case. DNA from swabs taken during the first victim's sexual assault examination matched the DNA recovered from beneath the second victim's fingernails, linking Davis to both crimes, prosecutors say.
Sentencing Set for November, Prior Strike in Question
Davis's sentencing hearing is scheduled for Nov. 6 at 11 a.m. in Department 13A before Judge James Arguelles, according to the district attorney's office. At that hearing, the court is expected to address an allegation that Davis has a prior robbery conviction that could count as a strike, a determination officials say remains outstanding.
The convictions cap a case built substantially on DNA linking the two attacks, according to prosecutors, after each victim's actions — one alerting bystanders at a liquor store, the other fighting back and leaping from a stairwell — helped investigators tie the assaults to the same assailant. No further sentencing details have been released ahead of the November hearing.
