By QUINCY SNOWDEN
Sentinel Colorado
AURORA, Colo. — A 26-year-old Kansas man has been sentenced to life in Colorado state prison for a 2019 crime spree that included the rape of a Mexican au pair in a Cherry Hills Village home and the carjacking of a woman outside an Aurora gym.
Arapahoe County District Court Judge Ben Leutwyler on Friday sentenced Tre Carrasco to a total of 136 years behind bars for the gaggle of convictions returned against him earlier this year, including felony sexual assault, aggravated robbery, car theft, false reporting, trespassing and attempting to influence a public servant.
An Arapahoe County jury convicted Carrasco of 11 charges following a five-day trial in May. He was acquitted of two charges.
Jurors agreed Carrasco attempted to kidnap a woman in Aurora while stealing her car outside of a 24-hour Fitness on South Abilene Street on Feb. 7, 2019. They also concluded that he used the same car to drive to a Cherry Hills Village home in the middle of the day, where he raped another woman less than a week later.
Aurora police arrested Carrasco, a native of Hays, on Feb. 12 after pulling him over near the intersection of East Colfax Avenue and Galena Street.
Carrasco has also been accused of raping another woman at gunpoint in the passenger seat of her car Kansas days prior to the Colorado crimes. He has yet to face charges filed against him in that case.
At the sentencing hearing Friday, prosecutors outlined Carrasco’s extensive history of lecherous behavior, dating back to his first offenses committed when he was 13 years old in Kansas.
Deputy District Attorney Casey Brown pointed to more than half a dozen instances of Carrasco peeping into windows and violently sexually assaulting women around Hays starting in 2008. The pattern culminated in July 2011, when Carrasco was tried and convicted as an adult for pinning a woman down and forcing her to perform oral sex on him. Carrasco, who was 16 when the offense occurred, reportedly told the woman that he would “be back” as he fled the scene.
In April 2013, Carrasco was sentenced to slightly more than eight years in prison for the July 2011 assault. He was released form prison in Kansas days before his crime spree in Colorado, records show.
Carrasco incurred a litany of disciplinary infractions while in Kansas prisons between 2014 and 2018, including using stimulants, disobeying orders and disrespecting corrections officers, according to Kansas Department of Corrections records.
Carrasco’s public defense attorney argued that the Kansas man has not had the chance to engage with meaningful rehabilitation because he was entered in the Kansas foster care system at age 11, and spent the latter half of his teens and early 20s in prison.
Brown, who argued for Leutwyler to impose the maximum sentence of 168 years in prison, disagreed.
“The defendant has made no effort to engage himself in rehabilitation,” he said. “He’s shown the court that he is not only unwilling but also incapable of being rehabilitated at this point.
Carrasco’s attorney said that his client has met with a counselor while detained at the Arapahoe County jail and gotten a job as a barber while detained in prison.
In July 2020, Carrasco pleaded guilty to a felony contraband charge while in custody in Arapahoe County, and he was sentenced to two years in Colorado state prison. He’s been detained at the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility in Buena Vista since then, but he was transferred back to the local county jail to await his sentencing.
Carrasco has been detained since being arrested in early 2019, earning 878 days of time served.
Leutwyler said the sentence was intended to prevent Carrasco from ultimately offending again.
“I am fully convinced — 100% convinced — that there is no woman safe in America if you are out of prison,” he said. “You will continue to rape people. You will steal from them, you will break into their homes, break into their cars; you will do whatever you feel you want to do.”
Neither Carrasco nor the women he victimized addressed the court at the hearing Friday.
Carrasco’s attorney suggested his client plans to appeal the convictions returned against him.