TULSA, Okla. — An attempted rape case from 2015 is finally being prosecuted after DNA evidence revealed the identity of the suspect.
Mario Larry Ruiz is now charged with attempted rape with use of a weapon.
An Affidavit claims, in 2015, an unknown man walked into a midtown Tulsa massage parlor and asked the victim for sexual acts.
The victim who owned the parlor refused the man’s advances and she said the suspect proceeded to pull out a gun, grope her and attempt to rape her at gunpoint.
The victim was taken by a friend to get a SANE exam and DNA gathered from the attempted assault sat for nearly eight years.
Ron Wilkinson said he remembers the event like it was yesterday. He was the friend who drove the victim to get her exam.
“Immediately when it happened, she called me on the phone,” Wilkinson said. “I always told her if anything happens, just call me. So, I was on the way there and … I called police for her.”
He said she was traumatized after the incident and left to go to China shortly later to take care of her son. He said she was on worker’s visa where, if she left, she could not return.
“After that event happened, she closed the shop,” Wilkinson said. “She was, and I understand, she was really traumatized by it. She was afraid to be alone.”
The victim has applied for a new visa, a U visa, to come back and testify against Ruiz, according to Wilkinson.
A U visa is specifically for victims of crimes that happened in the US.
“Being a predator to immigrants in that fashion is totally unnecessary and its criminal, he’s a predator,” Wilkinson said. “These predators don’t change their stripes, they’ll move on and do it somewhere and it looks like or sounds like that may have happened.”
The DNA gathered in the SANE exam eventually found a match in a rape case out of Carter County and the Tulsa County DA was able to finally file charges against Ruiz.
In the affidavit, it said Ruiz was also fired from his job in 2015, when the attempted rape occurred, for using his company’s credit card at massage parlors.
FOX23 has reached out to Carter County for statement, but has not heard back.
Wilkinson said the victim was only planning to temporarily do massage therapy. She wanted to open an ice cream shop because that’s what her family does in China.
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