14-year sentence for businessman who raped, choked woman he met at Bloomington hotel

A traveling businessman convicted of raping a woman he met at a Bloomington hotel has been sentenced to more than 14 years in prison.

Jimmy J. Hortiz, 42, of The Dalles, Ore., received the term last week in Hennepin County District Court in connection with the Nov. 30 attack in his room in the DoubleTree Hotel in Bloomington. A jury convicted him in late April.

Hortiz, who was convicted by jurors in late April of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and third-degree assault, received credit for six months in jail since his arrest and will spend the first nine years of his sentence in prison and the balance on supervised release.

The woman, who lives just north of the Twin Cities, told the Star Tribune soon after charges were filed that Hortiz was trying to kill her and that she lost consciousness four times.

A statement from the woman submitted to the county probation office shortly before sentencing said she has been "surviving, barely" since the rape and was unable to return to work for some time as a social worker. She further described how loud noises at night frighten her.

Also, despite being relieved that her attacker will be locked up for years to come, she said she will not feel safe upon his release.

"That kind of evil just doesn't go away," her statement to the probation office read.

A similar accusation was leveled against Hortiz nearly 19 years ago in suburban San Francisco. A woman alleged that Hortiz raped her in a Red Roof Inn in Burlingame in the summer of 2000 while he was a guest there on a business trip. A judge dismissed the charges soon after a pretrial hearing once the prosecution determined it could not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Hortiz's criminal history also includes violation of a domestic violence no-contact order in Washington state in 2016 and a drunken-driving conviction in 2014 in Missouri.

According the charges and trial testimony:

The woman, who was 27 years old at the time, told police she was among a group drinking in the hotel bar and became intoxicated. She next remembered being in a room with Hortiz.

She said he undressed her, became "extremely angry" and started choking her. He also punched the woman, grabbed her by the hair and shoved her head into a dresser. After escaping the room, she ran down a hall and had a panic attack in the lobby.

Hortiz told police that he had allowed the woman to come to his room to use the bathroom, but when she emerged, she was wearing only a towel. She began kissing him but he said no and she became angry, he claimed.