LIVERMORE — The Uber ride she was expecting after a night of drinking never came to get her in downtown Livermore — instead, a woman publicly known only as Jane Doe found herself held captive inside a box truck with nothing more than a mattress.
“I remember the thoughts going through my mind, the thought that this was it. I was going to die or go missing and no one was going to find me ever again,” the woman recalled at a recent sentencing hearing. With no other options, she “begged and pleaded” for her phone so she could say goodbye to her young daughter.
What happened next, she says, was “the smartest move I made in the whole evening in preparation to try to get rescued” during the harrowing October 2021 incident.
“When I was handed my phone, I instantly sent a text to my then-boyfriend and asked for help, sent him my location and managed to turn the vibrate off on my phone,” she said.
Doe was rescued that night, but not until after suffering through a sexual assault that lasted 15-20 minutes. Afterward, she feigned sleep until her captor left, then texted her then-boyfriend, who called the police to go pick her up, according to court records.
Her attacker was arrested shortly after. He was identified in court records as 57-year-old Luis Coronado-Miranda, a man who worked at a Livermore plaster business who’d been arrested — but never charged — on suspicion of kidnapping five years earlier. This time, prosecutors charged Coronado-Miranda with kidnapping, forcible rape, forcible sodomy and forcible oral copulation, all felonies.
Earlier this year, Coronado-Miranda took a plea deal: He pleaded no contest to assault with intent to commit a felony and was sentenced to four years he had already spent in jail since his arrest. The deal comes with another significant consequence, though — Coronado-Miranda must register as a sex offender for life, court records show.
At the sentencing hearing in October, Doe spoke publicly for the only time since the 2022 preliminary hearing, where she testified as the lone witness against Coronado-Miranda. Authorities said her word was backed up by surveillance video, cellphone records that show her and Coronado-Miranda’s phones were aligned for much of the early morning on the day of the incident and a rape test taken after her rescue.
Doe said at the sentencing hearing that it all started on Oct. 29, 2021, when she headed for downtown Livermore for what was supposed to be a night of fun with a close friend. Instead, her and her friend quarreled and the woman told Doe she could no longer stay over that night, leaving her with two choices: drive drunk, or sleep in the car. She chose the second option, but had her boyfriend call an Uber driver to come pick her up.
Coronado-Miranda found her first, according to court records.
She said he took her to a box truck with nothing in the back but a mattress, then brought her to a near-empty mobile home where she was sexually assaulted repeatedly. She described the attack numerous times, first during multiple police and doctor interviews, then publicly in court at the preliminary hearing, then again at sentencing. She said she cried during the attack but believed she would have a chance to escape afterward.
After making it out of the mobile home, she found a police officer and underwent a hospital exam. After the attack, she went on leave and tried to deal with her trauma, but returned to work too soon, she said, because she had no other financial option. Her struggles lasted years. Over the past 12 months, things have started looking up, she said.
“After nearly four years, I can finally say I think I am truly beginning to heal from what has happened to me,” Doe said in court.