Berkeley Man Arraigned in Walnut Creek Apartment Rape Case May Have Stayed Nearby; Family Stunned by His Arrest

A 22-year-old Berkeley man wept as a judge arraigned him Monday on charges that he raped one woman and attacked two others at a Walnut Creek apartment complex over the past six weeks.

Antonio Andre Mouton, accused of preying on young women in the Park Regency apartment complex on Oak Road, used his mustard-yellow Contra Costa County jail-issued shirt to dab at tears as Judge Harlan Grossman read the charges against him. Mouton is charged with multiple counts, including one count of rape and two counts of attempted rape, in attacks that took place between June 30 and July 6.

In the audience in the Martinez courtroom Monday were Mouton's mother, girlfriend, relatives and family friends who all talked, after the hearing, about reeling in disbelief that he had been implicated in such crimes.

"I'm devastated," Mouton's mother, Tracy Ellis, said outside the courtroom Monday. 

"It's catching everyone by surprise -- family, friends, everyone who knows him doesn't think he would do anything like this," said a woman who identified herself as Mouton's girlfriend. She declined to give her name. 

Senior deputy district attorney Jon Yamaguchi and Contra Costa Sheriff's authorities said that DNA testing linked Mouton to the July 6 rape.

In that case, a woman woke up to find the assailant in her apartment. She described the assailant as an African American man about 6 foot 2 inches. She was raped.  She also said she had left her front door unlocked.

The first case, June 30, also involved a tall, slender African American man. He forced his way into the woman's apartment after she opened the door to him at about 1:30 a.m. 

In the attack at about 8:30 a.m. last Tuesday, the woman said she woke up to find the man with his hand over her mouth, threatening her. She struggled, possibly frightening off her assailant with pepper spray. She said she had locked her front door. Yamaguchi did not know if investigators had determined how the man gained entrance to the apartment.

A conflicting picture of Mouton emerged at the hearing. A family friend, Todd Walker, said he had known Mouton since he was a kid growing up in Berkeley and had coached him in Pop Warner football. "He's a good quiet kid," Walker said. 

Walker and others insisted that Mouton turned himself in after hearing from his mother that Contra Costa Sheriff's detectives were looking for him on a "warrant." They all said Mouton told them he had no reason to hide. 

"He said, 'I'm not going to run,'" said his girlfriend, who saw Mouton at the Pittsburg BART station last Tuesday evening just before sheriff's deputies arrested him. The girlfriend said had been with Mouton for a year and a half and trusted him with her own child.

Yamaguchi described Mouton has having "access" to the Park Regency complex because he had been staying or visiting a nearby Walnut Creek residence. Yamaguchi also said that Mouton, at the time of his arrest, was on probation for a misdemeanor weapons charge involving the negligent discharge of a firearm. As far as he knew, Mouton had no prior history involving sexual assault.

There were differing accounts from family and friends about whether Mouton was staying near the Park Regency before or at the time of the attacks.

Ellis told the Contra Costa Times that she lives next to the Park Regency complex, but said in a subsequent interview that she was only staying with a friend in Walnut Creek and that her son had not been to visit her lately.

Ellis and Mouton's girlfriend said he didn't have much reason to be in Walnut Creek lately because he had gotten a job at Walmart in Union City. 

Mouton has a twin brother who was sent to prison for a parole violation in June after he was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon in connection with a May 20 Danville shooting that injured a 52-year-old man.While no charges have been filed against Antwan Mouton, the is still considered a suspect in that case.

"It's hard, it's hard," Ellis said. "I just lost my mom in January. First Antwan (is arrested), now Antonio."

She and others said they were concerned about Antonio's Mouton's welfare in jail. Mouton's girlfriend said she had received a call from him at about 8:30 a.m. Monday morning, in which he said he had been left alone naked in a Contra Costa jail cell for 10 hours, that water had been thrown on him, and that he had been beaten by deputies. 

Sheriff's Department spokesman Jimmy Lee told the Contra Costa Times that Mouton's claim is "completely false, baseless and without merit."