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Former Camp Pendleton Marine Convicted Of Assaulting Colleague

A former Marine was convicted of sneaking into the Camp Pendleton apartment of a female Marine he didn't know and sexually assaulting her as she slept.

Pedro Javier Orellana, 24, is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 30 by U.S. District Judge Larry Burns.

A federal jury Thursday found Orellana guilty of one count of sexual abuse of an incapacitated victim.

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The defendant, who had been released on bond with GPS monitoring since his arrest in March, was immediately taken back into custody following his conviction.

According to evidence produced at trial, Orellana went to a neighbor's house after the sexual assault where he hid, and the victim reported the assault to her friends.

Five days later, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service tracked Orellana down in Vista.

He admitted to NCIS officials and to the jury that he had only seen the victim in passing twice, that he did not know her name, and that he had never had a conversation with her.

Despite that, Orellana walked into the victim's apartment without knocking, looked for her on a couch, then walked into a dark bedroom where she lay on top of a bed.

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When he spoke to the NCIS, Orellana used words like "deep sleep," "unconscious" and "too drunk to know what was going on" to describe the victim's state.

Orellana also stated that he had received training regarding sexual assault prevention, and knew that alcohol impairs a person's ability to consent to sex.