INITIAL ALERTEmail
Timely Warning Crime Bulletin: Sexual assault
UC Santa Cruz police officers are investigating a rape that occurred late Friday night in the Upper Campus forest at the residential campus. The female victim and friends were at a large party in the woods. Around midnight, the friends found the woman passed out and brought her to the fire station on campus for medical attention. The woman shared with her friends that she had been sexually assaulted.
The suspect is described as a young white man, approximately 5-foot, 10-inches tall with short brown hair and brown eyes.
For information about the investigation, contact Detective Paul DeOcampo at ppdeocam@ucsc.edu, or provide information through the UCPD Tip Line at 831-459-3847. Information can be kept confidential.
This Timely Warning Crime Bulletin is being issued in compliance with the federal Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act.
UCSC's Upper Campus is a large forested area used informally for outdoor parties — disclosing 'forest at the residential campus' is unusual location framing for a Clery alert
The phrase 'found her passed out' is candid about the survivor's incapacitation without explicitly using clinical or legal terms like 'unconscious' or 'incapacitated'
Detailed suspect description ('young white man, approximately 5-foot, 10-inches tall with short brown hair and brown eyes') is rare in acquaintance-context alerts and typical of stranger-context alerts
Friends bringing the victim to the campus fire station for medical attention reflects the [CARE advocacy program](https://care.ucsc.edu/) and student-network informal response patterns
UCSC was [later found by a 2024 California State Auditor's report](https://lookout.co/uc-santa-cruz-reported-inaccurate-crime-statistics-state-auditors-report-finds) to have underreported Clery sex-offense statistics — institutional context for any UCSC sexual-assault alert from this period
Verbatim text recovered from the news.ucsc.edu Timely Warning Crime Bulletin page — narrative paragraph, suspect description, and Detective DeOcampo / 831-459-3847 tip-line contact are preserved as published