A former Cerritos College football player, from Hemet, was convicted Thursday of raping a college student in 2016, officials said.
Kishawn Holmes, 22, after less than a day of jury deliberation, was found guilty of forcible rape, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a news statement.
Holmes is scheduled to be sentenced May 2 at the Norwalk branch of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, prosecutors said. He faces a maximum possible sentence of 18 years in state prison and lifetime sex offender registration.
The crime took place Sept. 8, 2016, when Holmes invited a fellow college student to his Norwalk apartment and sexually assaulted her, prosecutors said. She was 19.
The victim alerted law enforcement about the attack some three months later in January, prosecutors said. Holmes was arrested about a month after.
Holmes had been previously accused of rape and other sex crimes while he was a student and football player at Vista Murrieta High School.
He was 17 then and arrested and charged with crimes against six underage female victims.
The charges included two counts of forcible rape, two counts of lewd acts with a girl under 14 and three counts of false imprisonment, as well as one count of dissuading a victim from reporting a crime. Holmes’ family and attorney had said the charges were unfounded.
He pleaded guilty to rape by force in April 2014, Riverside County District Attorney’s Office spokesman John Hall said in a previous story.
Holmes played football at Vista Murrieta, where he transferred after attending West Valley High School in Hemet.
His performance on the field in high school earned him at least one scholarship from a Division I school, Oklahoma State University.