A worker at an Extended Stay America hotel in downtown Austin has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman who had checked into the hotel.
According to the arrest affidavit, Valerio Utrera, 28, was working at the hotel when five women checked into a room April 2. The five women were given four keys to the room around 5 p.m. and then an additional key was made for the room around 3:30 a.m. April 3.
Austin police said video showed Utrera reaching across the front desk counter and eventually crossing over the counter to the employee side and repeatedly working with the room key making machine. Police said the manager of the hotel, also Utrera’s roommate, confirmed Utrera made the extra key.
The five women told police that they had gone out later in the evening and two of them returned around midnight. The other three women returned a short while later. After this, one of the women said she woke up to find a hand going into her yoga pants.
The woman said she was confused and thought it could have been one of the other women. She said she slapped the hand away from her pants five times and that the person allegedly assaulting her also grabbed her chest.
The woman’s friend told police around that same time, someone took her cell phone off her couch while she was lying down. She said she then saw a cell phone light flash and the room door open, adding it looked like someone wearing white was in the doorway.
The women then left their room to look for the stolen phone. One of the women had a conversation with Utrera in the lobby of the hotel and saw he was wearing a white shirt. Utrera, according to the arrest affidavit, told the women he was waiting for his roommate to pick him up. Police said the women accused him of entering their room and he ran, but police were later able to arrest him at his home.
Police said Utrera made the room key, entered the room with the intent to commit a sexual assault and then stole the cell phone from one of the women. The cell phone was never found.
Utrera faces a first-degree felony charge of burglary with the intent to commit a felony – sexual assault. He’s being held on a $60,000 bail and must stay at least 200 yards away from the hotel if he bonds out of jail.