Man guilty of unlawful sex with minor in case of dead teen set to receive time served sentence

December 17, 2024

A man who sexually preyed on a 16-year-old runaway later found dead on a San Francisco street, will be handed a time served sentence and ordered to register as a sex offender for life today at the city’s Hall of Justice.

Javonn Allen earlier pleaded guilty to one count of ‘unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor’ with respect to Victorria Moran Hidalgo, the teenager whose partially-dressed body was left on a Minna Street sidewalk in February 2022.

A post mortem examination determined that Victorria’s death resulted from the toxic effects of a combination of fentanyl, heroin, flubromazolam, flubromazepam, cocaine and alcohol. The suggestion was made in court that she may have been used as a ‘mule’ for inconspicuous, and possibly intimate, carriage of narcotics.

Per the terms of a plea deal Allen’s notional sentence will be three years in state prison. However he will not actually go to state prison, but instead be immediately released having served just over 20 months in county jail since his arrest.

Prosecutors agreed to dismiss a ‘strike’ allegation against Allen.

Superior Court Judge Harry Jacobs accepted the guilty plea on November 22 and set formal sentencing for today.

Allen first came to the attention of police in 2015 when arrested for attempting to kidnap schoolgirls at Antioch’s Deer Valley High School. Since then he has been arrested for crimes including forcible rape, discharging a firearm, spousal battery and child endangerment.

Javonn Allen at a hearing on May 24 2023

At a preliminary hearing last year, the court heard testimony from the county assistant medical examiner, a criminalist from SFPD’s crime lab, SFPD homicide and special victims unit detectives, and Allen’s probation officer. Their often harrowing evidence laid bare the reduced circumstances endured by Ms Moran Hidalgo in the time leading up to her death. It also detailed law enforcement’s view that Allen was “dangerous” and “a possible sexual predator on the street”.

Prosecutors demonstrated that Allen knew the victim, her age and that he was specifically forbidden to have contact with her. Forensic evidence yielded from a post mortem examination proved Allen had had intimate contact with the victim.

Ms Moran Hidalgo had been reported missing on multiple occasions and had run away from a group home in Concord. The court earlier heard that, three months before her death, both she and Allen were admitted to hospital having sustained gunshot wounds.

Rayne Villarreal, special agent for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, supervised Allen in her previous position as a parole agent.

She testified that, as of December 2021, “he had a special condition of parole not to have contact with minors” and, specifically, that “he was to have no contact with female minors between the age of 10 to 18.”

20 year SFPD veteran Sgt Kevin Wong, of the department’s special victims unit, testified about the discovery of Ms Moran Hidalgo’s body. He spoke with ‘quick response vehicle’ paramedic Michael Harper about what he found on arrival at Minna Street at 6:38am.

“He observed a juvenile female who appeared to be deceased,” said Sgt Wong, “but they are technically alive until they call time of death.”

“He observed the female patient-slash-victim had her pants down by her knees [and] he mentioned that there was a female standing over the patient pulling up the patient’s pants.”

“He could see multiple people in that area. An unidentified black male, 6’1”, very thin, standing over the woman…[the man had] dreads. He walked away as medics approached.”

“This was a classic fentanyl overdose,” Harper told Wong.

During his investigation he spoke with a parole agent, Jelani Hunter. “He said [Allen] was a dangerous person,” Wong said of Hunter. “We did feel he was a possible sex predator on the street and that a 290 [sex offender] registration would be a good thing to have.”

He testified that it was him who obtained a DNA sample from Allen in jail.

Assistant medical examiner Dr Karen Zeigler, who conducted the autopsy on Ms Moran Hidalgo – initially known only as Jane Doe #38 – told the court that toxicology tests found evidence of fentanyl, heroin, flubromazolam, flubromazepam, alcohol and cocaine.

It was determined that the toxic effects of these drugs caused her death.

Post-mortem x-ray and computer topography also led to the recovery of bullet fragments from the victim’s left calf, she said.

Zeigler reported that an investigator from the chief medical examiner’s office who attended the scene said “a witness had said they saw a person on the sidewalk possibly being sexually assaulted.”

“I did not see signs of a traumatic sexual assault,” Zeigler said. “But I couldn’t say whether sexual activity had occurred.”

During the examination she also “found a thin purple synthetic material in the vaginal canal”.

“It could be a piece of a condom,” she noted.

The court heard from the SFPD Crime Lab Criminalist Maria Cownan. She conducted DNA testing on samples including two intimate swabs and the synthetic material found inside the deceased. She compared these to the DNA sample of the defendant obtained by police. With respect to the one side of the synthetic material, analysis revealed the presence of three individuals’ DNA. The resulting data, Cownan reported, was consistent with two possible explanations: either the presence of the DNA of Ms Moran Hidalgo, Allen and one other unrelated individual or the presence of the DNA of Ms Moran Hidalgo and two other unrelated individuals, neither of which was Allen.

Cownan told the court that it was 13.4 septillion times more likely that the first explanation, with Allen’s DNA present, was correct.

With respect to the other side of the synthetic material, there was a mixture of the DNA of three individuals, a minimum of one of which was a male.

Cownan reported that it was 821 billion times more likely that this demonstrated the presence of the victim’s DNA, Allen’s DNA and the DNA of one other unrelated person versus an alternative explanation of the victim’s DNA and the DNA of two unrelated individuals neither of which was Allen.

SFPD homicide detective Inspector Mark Lee was responsible for investigating the suspicious death of Ms Moran Hidalgo. Initially making contact with Allen by phone, “he said he hadn’t been in contact with [Ms Moran Hidalgo] since his release from jail.”

“He was aware the she had passed,” he added.

Lee then went to speak with him again during a scheduled meeting Allen had with his parole officer. After first declining to speak, Lee said that he subsequently agreed to talk with him.

“He said [Ms Moran Hidalgo] left him the night prior to her death…to go meet a female friend of hers,” said Lee of Allen.

During their cross examination of these prosecution witnesses, defense attorneys sought to show that Allen did not know he was not meant to have contact with Ms Moran Hidalgo specifically, leading witness Rayne Villareal to concede that this was advised verbally and not provided in writing.

They also sought to demonstrate that there was no evidence per se of sperm inside the vagina of the victim. They pointed out that the synthetic material on which Allen’s DNA was found was a “moveable object inside the vaginal canal” and not evidence of intercourse.

The evidence demonstrated that there were multiple individuals near the victim when first responders arrived who, said the defense, were likely to have contaminated the scene. None of the descriptions of these individuals, it was said, matched that of Allen.

They also raised the possibility of cross-contamination at the SFPD crime lab.

The defense asked Sgt Wong whether the location of the victim’s death was an area known to be frequented by drug users and was known for a high number of drugs overdoses. They asked whether he was aware of individuals being used (as “forced labor”) to hold drugs.

Wong generally claimed a lack of professional knowledge about the drugs scene near Minna and 7^th. However the line of questioning seemed intended to imply that the victim may have been being used as a mule for illegal narcotics.

Earlier proceedings in the case were marked by acrimony between San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and the Office of the Public Defender – driven by fury on the part of the defense that an assistant district attorney, Armando Miranda, who had previously represented Allen while a public defender, had been “working in the shadows” against him as a prosecutor.

The Public Defender’s Office failed in its attempt to have the District Attorney’s Office booted from the case and replaced with the California Attorney General’s Office because of Miranda’s involvement.

The Public Defender’s Office was itself subsequently forced out of the case after prosecutors told the court that Allen’s attorneys were going to be compelled, in effect, to be a witness against their own client at trial.

This came after a judge indicated she would allow transcripts from an earlier case to be admitted as evidence – specifically a case in which the public defender had represented Allen, less than three months before Victorria died, where his association with the teenager had arisen.

These took place in December 2021 after Allen and Ms Moran Hidalgo were both hospitalized with gunshot wounds. In those hearings – parole revocation proceedings – indisputable reference was made by several parties, including by a public defender, to Victorria being a “juvenile”.

Prosecutors made it clear that they intended to present this as evidence that Allen conclusively knew Victorria was underage when he resumed contact with her after being released and immediately before her death. They also pointed out that the public defender had an obligation to fully communicate the facts and allegations in the parole petition to their client.

With the judge having ruled that ‘unsanitized’ transcripts of those hearings were admissible, the District Attorney’s office filed a motion drawing her attention to the consequences, questioning how the public defender could continue in the circumstances, and highlighting the court’s “inherent authority to disqualify a lawyer to make sure proceedings are fair and appear fair.”

The Public Defender’s office was placed in an untenable position of potentially having their own words used against their client. As such they submitted a motion for their own withdrawal.

Allen has been since represented by a succession of ‘conflict’ attorneys.