Monday, September 14, 2009

Convicted: 43 Years


A former Palo Alto High School student who played running back on the football team and once tried to join the Marines was sentenced Friday to 43 years to life in prison for kidnapping a 17-year-old girl off the street from his old neighborhood and sexually assaulting her.
Todd David Burpee, 22, was convicted in May by a Santa Clara County jury of attacking the Gunn High School student Oct. 30, 2007. The girl was beaten as she locked her bike outside her home on Arastradero Road after school, dragged into a car and sexually assaulted. The jury acquitted Burpee of attempted murder.
Burpee held the girl captive for 90 minutes before the bloodied victim managed to run from his car in Sunnyvale.
Burpee was arrested two days later as he waited with his girlfriend in the drive-through lane at a Wendy's restaurant in San Jose. His last known address was in San Jose, but he apparently had been bouncing from one residence to another, police said.
He was convicted of two counts of assault with the intent of rape or sexual penetration, two counts of felony assault, one count of kidnapping for the purpose of sexual assault and one count of sexual penetration by force. He was also found guilty of enhancements alleging he caused great bodily injury.
Judge Griffin Bonini sentenced Burpee in Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose. Burpee will not be eligible for parole until he is 60 years old, said Amy Cornell, spokeswoman for District Attorney Dolores Carr.
Burpee played on the football team and ran track for Palo Alto High during his sophomore and junior years. He expressed an intention to go into the Marines after graduation in 2006, according to an article that June in the student newspaper.
He contacted the Marines in November 2005 about joining, but failed the armed services aptitude test in December of that year, the military service said. The test covers topics including vocabulary, paragraph comprehension and mathematics.
Source: Henry K. Lee @ The SF Chronicle


Panache

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