Maritime Heritage Park rapist sentenced to 9 years for sexual assault of stranger

A Bellingham man must serve more than 9 years in prison for raping a stranger in Maritime Heritage Park, a judge ruled Thursday.

A woman bumped into a man she didn’t know as she walked by the park around dawn on June 7, 2016. He told her his name was Chance, according to charging papers. Police later identified the man as Lance Joseph Rosa, 37.

Rosa and the woman talked for about a half-hour, and she offered him three cigarettes. Together they walked along the boardwalk into the park until he shoved her to the ground below, where another homeless man forced her to perform oral sex, according to her report. Rosa raped her, too, under the boardwalk, according to the charges. He told her he’d done the same thing to three or four women, she reported.

The woman went to the hospital, where medical staff swabbed her for DNA. A sex crime exam revealed scratches and bruises on her neck, back, knees and legs. Police released a sketch of Chance, based on her description. She described the other man as white, skinny, smelly, in his 50s or 60s. She didn’t get a good look at the suspect, she reported, because she was terrified.

Two days later, on June 9, officers spoke with Rosa in the park. He had a pierced left nipple, as described by the woman. He’d been sleeping under the boardwalk. And he looked somewhat like the sketch. Police brought the woman to the park, but she didn’t think it was Rosa: the beard was wrong and his hair was too dark, she said.

Nonetheless police swabbed Rosa’s cheeks for DNA. A week later it came back as a match. Rosa had skipped town, taking a train and a ferry en route to Port Angeles. Officers there arrested him, and sent him back to Whatcom County.

“What girl did I supposedly rape?” he asked a Bellingham police detective, according to court records.

When police told him, Rosa insisted it had been consensual sex, initiated by the woman – which he maintains in spite of his guilty plea, according to a Department of Corrections investigation. Rosa gave conflicting statements about the other man, saying he was a “homophobe” who wouldn’t have sex around another man, and at another point, offering to help police find the other suspect. (That man hasn’t been identified.)

Rosa’s criminal record stretches back to his adolescence in the 1990s. As an adult he has been convicted of second-degree burglary, drug possession and misdemeanors. He recounted a troubled life: hyperactivity and Tourette’s syndrome as a youth, and addiction to methamphetamine as an adult. He came to Bellingham to catch a ferry to Alaska, where he hoped to escape his drug addiction, according to the DOC investigation.

Rosa pleaded guilty in February to third-degree rape, first-degree kidnapping and second-degree assault. He declined to make a statement in court Thursday.

Superior Court Judge Raquel Montoya-Lewis sentenced him to 9 years and 2 months behind bars, as suggested by the plea deal.

“This affected more than just the victim,” Deputy Prosecutor Eric Richey told the court. “It affected the community. It makes all of us feel unsafe in our parks.”

For years Maritime Heritage Park on the city’s waterfront – between downtown and the Lighthouse Mission – has been occupied by a large homeless population. Weeks after Rosa’s arrest, and another rape among the park’s homeless, city officials announced a campaign to improve safety in the park: brighter lighting, park stewards seven days a week in the summer, and more public activities.

This story was originally published April 14, 2017 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Maritime Heritage Park rapist sentenced to 9 years for sexual assault of stranger."