A 21-year-old woman was cooking dinner at her stove with the window open when, police say, a man appeared half inside her ground-level St. Paul apartment and tried to pull her out into the night. She kicked and screamed until he let go and ran. Now 28-year-old Eduart Gomez Ochoa faces charges in connection with the October 22 attack, which investigators say echoes other cases already pending against him.
According to the complaint, officers were sent to the apartment building on the 700 block of Como Avenue around 10:20 p.m. that night after a report of an attempted kidnapping, as reported by FOX 9. The woman told police she had lowered her blinds because of the warm weather but left the window itself open while she cooked, and that a man she did not recognize suddenly had half his body inside her kitchen. He grabbed her and tried to pull her out the window, FOX 9's report states, before she kicked and screamed enough that he released her and fled the scene.
Officers who responded found damage to the window screen, and the station's report notes they recovered a hat and headband from inside the kitchen that the woman said belonged to the man who attacked her. She later picked Gomez Ochoa out of a photo lineup as the man who tried to kidnap her, expressing 80 percent certainty in that identification, according to the complaint as described by CBS Minnesota.
Charges Filed, Bond Set
The Ramsey County Attorney's Office charged Gomez Ochoa on October 26, according to the Pioneer Press, which reported the complaint says officers recognized a case involving Gomez Ochoa with a similar modus operandi. Exactly how the charges are described has varied between outlets: KSTP reported one count of first-degree burglary and one count of attempted kidnapping, while FOX 9's account describes a single count of first-degree assault/burglary alongside the attempted kidnapping count for the October 22 incident. CBS Minnesota likewise reported first-degree burglary and attempted kidnapping charges, and said a judge set his bond at $150,000 at his first court appearance.
Ramsey County, which encompasses St. Paul, hears felony cases like this one in the Second Judicial District at the Ramsey County Courthouse in downtown St. Paul. Under Minnesota law, first-degree burglary covers entering a building without consent with intent to commit a crime, or entering without consent and then committing a crime inside, and also requires at least one listed condition, such as a person being present in a dwelling, possession of a dangerous weapon or an assault; it carries a potential sentence of up to 20 years, according to the Minnesota Revisor of Statutes. A separate statute describes kidnapping as confining or removing a person without consent for certain listed purposes, with sentencing addressed elsewhere in the law, per the Minnesota Revisor of Statutes.
Other Pending Cases From May
Court records cited by the Pioneer Press show Gomez Ochoa had already been charged in May in three separate incidents in St. Paul and Maplewood, and that those cases remain separate from the October window case. FOX 9 reported one of those May cases stems from a May 7 incident in which he allegedly broke into an apartment and sexually assaulted a juvenile female, and another from a May 12 incident in which he allegedly attacked a woman in a parking lot, tried to touch her breasts, and bit her face.
CBS Minnesota reported Gomez Ochoa also faces second-degree criminal sexual conduct, first-degree burglary and third-degree assault charges tied to a separate May incident on the 1500 block of Westminster Street in St. Paul. Ramsey County Community Corrections operates the Ramsey County Correctional Facility in Maplewood, which houses some defendants held in the county's criminal justice system.
A dossier-sourced snippet from a Saint Paul Police Department post on X described the apprehension of a sexual assault suspect wanted for an attempted kidnapping and burglary from October 22, identifying him as 27-year-old Eduart Gomez Ochoa — an age that conflicts with the 28 reported elsewhere. The full context, timing and engagement around that post could not be independently verified beyond the clipped excerpt available.
