Olga Mendez
MURRIETA (CNS) – A convicted felon accused of abducting and using a Taser on an acquaintance in Winchester was charged Tuesday with kidnapping and other offenses.
Olga Almendra Mendez, 44, of Menifee was arrested Friday following a week-long Riverside County Sheriff’s Department investigation.
Along with kidnapping, Mendez is charged with making criminal threats, assault with a deadly weapon and sentence-enhancing allegations of using a deadly weapon in the commission of a felony and committing a crime while on bail.
The defendant, who is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail at the Smith Correctional Facility in Banning, was slated to make her initial court appearance Tuesday afternoon at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta.
According to sheriff’s Sgt. Bradley Talbott, just before 10 a.m. on Dec. 18, patrol deputies were called to a residence in the area of Leon Road and Olive Avenue to investigate reports of a domestic altercation, but instead discovered that a “kidnapping and assault … had occurred.”
Talbott said the victim, identified only as a Winchester woman, suffered a non-life-threatening wound, which court documents indicated stemmed from receiving a Taser shock, and was taken to a regional trauma center for treatment. The woman received medical attention and was released from the hospital.
Mendez was soon identified as the alleged assailant, and detectives initiated a search, but were unsuccessful in locating her for a week, until confirming that she was in Los Angeles County, according to the sheriff’s spokesman.
The defendant was taken into custody without incident Friday in Paramount.
A possible motive behind the alleged abduction was not provided.
The alleged victim identified herself on social media as Erin Quinn, and claimed on social media that Mendez lured her to the location by offering to donate presents for a toy drive Quinn was attending.
Quinn said on her Facebook page that she drove to a location given by Mendez, who used a false name, and left her vehicle unattended for an undetermined amount of time to search for her.
“Little did I know, it was a set up and when I went back to my car, someone was in the back seat waiting for me with a taser,” Quinn wrote on Dec. 19. “While the suspect was pulling my hair and repeatedly tazing me for over 30 times over a 25-minute span of time. She made me drive while this was going on threatening my boys and my mom would be next.”
Quinn said she told authorities that she recognized the suspect as her former house cleaner after she crashed her vehicle to escape the incident.
“My brain was jolting and my body was shutting down,” Quinn told KTLA5. “I thought literally either I was going to die or I was going to pass out.”
Court records show Mendez has a prior conviction for insurance fraud. She additionally has unresolved cases pending in Superior Court for alleged forgery, check fraud and filing a false police report.
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