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Police trainee arrested for rape
by Jason Dietrich
A Redondo man was taken into custody Thursday, April 26 after allegedly raping two teenage girls last month. Donald Ray Hammond of Redondo Beach was training to become a Los Angeles Harbor police officer before the arrest occurred.
A Palos Verdes Peninsula High School student told school officials on April 18 that she and a Redondo Union student had been raped three weeks earlier by a man they met at a coffee house. She had been hospitalized after taking an overdose of an anti-depressant drug and told school officials that she had started carrying a knife to school because she thought she was being stalked by Hammond.
The girl told detectives that she and a Redondo Union student met Hammond at the Coffee Cartel on Catalina Avenue and went back to his house. Hammond allegedly showed the girls pornography.
The girls said contact began with the girl's consent, but Hammond didn’t stop when the girls asked him to. Hammond then restrained and raped them, the girls said. The girls escaped the house but didn’t tell anyone what had happened to them until one of them was questioned after the overdose.
Bail was set at $25,000 at Hammond’s arraignment Friday, April 27. He was removed from his position at the Port of Los Angeles after charges of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, sexual battery by way of restraint and displaying obscene material to a minor with the intention of seduction were filed last week. His pretrial was scheduled for May 8.ER