A manager for the overnight cleaning crews at Ball Arena sexually abused women who worked for him, leveraging his position and in some cases their immigration statuses to try to ensure the women stayed silent, Denver police allege.
Antonio Escobedo Loya, 38, a longtime employee of Premier Facility Services, routinely groped the women who worked overnight at Ball Arena, spanked them, propositioned them and forced them into unwelcome sexual situations, police allege. Women who refused his advances were fired or were moved to cleaning crews in other locations, investigators found.
Escobedo Loya is set for a preliminary hearing in Denver County Court next month on four counts of sexual contact without consent, one count of attempted sexual contact without consent, and one count of indecent exposure, according to court records. The charges relate to two victims.
Escobedo Loya could not be reached for comment, and his attorney, Elaine Lukic, did not return a request for comment.
Although Escobedo Loya is charged with crimes against two women, at least nine women spoke with police investigators and described a similar pattern of abusive behavior during their shifts at Ball Arena. The manager routinely touched their breasts, hit them, propositioned them, and in one instance, masturbated in front of a woman, according to police records.
Escobedo Loya boasted that the women couldn’t stop him because he was the boss, the women reported. Some women did not speak up because they needed the work or because they were undocumented, police found.
One woman, who is from Mexico, told officers that she was forced to record Escobedo Loya as he had sex with a woman inside a men’s bathroom at Ball Arena. When she tried to refuse, he told her that she had to do what he said, because he was the boss, according to court records.
In January, she said, Escobedo Loya called her into an office where he and several men grabbed her, held her down, spread her legs, pulled down her shorts, groped and spanked her, according to court records.
The woman begged them to stop, and the men, led by Escobedo Loya, eventually released her when a witness intervened and told them to leave her alone, according to police records. She didn’t report the assault immediately because she was worried about losing her work visa, she told police.
Another woman told police that Escobedo Loya took her to a janitorial supply room at Ball Arena and assaulted her in late 2023. She pushed him away, and he grew furious, she said. The next day, a supervisor told her she could no longer work at Ball Arena and falsely claimed that she’d come to work under the influence of alcohol, the woman told police.
In another incident captured on video, Escobedo Loya was shown straddling a woman as she lay face down on turf. He spanked the woman twice and then grabbed the back of her head and pushed her face into the turf while another man laughed, according to a search warrant affidavit.
In an interview with investigators, Escobedo Loya denied having sex at work or kissing anyone at work. He was “joking with a friend” in the video, and admitted he might have “joked around” with the woman “maybe one more time,” according to the search warrant. He said he saw nothing wrong in the video.
Many of the alleged victims worked for Matabuena Services, a subcontractor to Premier Facility Services, which holds the contract to clean Ball Arena. Kevin Arellano Fabian, general manager at Matabuena Services, told police he met with Matthew Steinhart, general manager of Premier Facility Services, in February 2024 to raise concerns that women were being abused by Escobedo Loya.
Steinhart dismissed the complaints as “just rumors,” according to the search warrant. Premier Facility Services reduced Matabuena Services’ work after that conversation, Arellano Fabian told police.
Steinhart told police he had not been previously alerted to any sexual harassment allegations. He said the company decided in May to work less with Matabuena Services because Matabuena Services was relying too heavily on temporary workers, according to the warrant.
Representatives at both companies did not respond to requests for comment.
Escobedo Loya was arrested May 29 and released from jail May 31 after he posted $50,000 cash bail.
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