Bussiness
Man convicted of raping teen inside Waynesboro business
WAYNESBORO — A man is facing up to life in prison after pleading guilty to raping a teenage girl last summer inside a Waynesboro business.
Jamie C. Chacon, 44, of Waynesboro, was convicted Friday in Waynesboro Circuit Court. Two additional charges of forcible sodomy were not prosecuted in exchange for his guilty plea.
Waynesboro Senior Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Elysse Stolpe said the girl was working at the Eagle Game room the night of July 29, 2023, on West Main Street when Chacon entered the business. Stolpe said Chacon milled about the business for about 10 minutes until it was empty.
“There’d been other customers in the store,” the prosecutor said.
With nobody left in the business except Chacon and the teen, he went to the back of the building near a storage area and bathroom, out of view of surveillance cameras. Stolpe said he returned from the back and asked the teen where the bathroom was, and she pointed him to the back of the business where he’d just been.
Stolpe said Chacon, who she said had been looking for surveillance cameras, asked the girl if she wanted to do drugs and told her he could make her “feel like a princess.” When he asked if she wanted to go into the back of the business with him, Stolpe said the teen, whom she described as a “trusting person,” didn’t want to but also didn’t want to seem impolite, so she followed him into a back hallway, where surveillance cameras could not see them for 10 minutes or so.
Once in the hallway, Stolpe said Chacon pinned the teen against a wall. “She couldn’t push him off,” Stolpe said. Chacon overpowered her and the teen “froze,” the prosecutor said. Chacon pushed her to the floor, where she was raped as she wept, Stolpe said.
Afterward, Chacon continued to make small talk with the teen for a few minutes, even giving her his phone number and asking her not to call police. According to Stolpe, the teen tried to remain calm in an effort not to anger him. “He already did the worst thing that I could imagine,” the teen said, according to Stolpe. “I didn’t want to know what else he could do.”
After Chacon left the business, the teen called her boyfriend. Stolpe said surveillance video showed her saying, “I’ve been raped.” She made a second phone call to a parent, and she was then taken to the hospital, where DNA swabs were gathered. Testing by the Virginia Department of Forensic Science concluded Chacon’s DNA was found on the victim’s bruised thigh, Stolpe said.
Because Chacon had given her his phone number, Stolpe said authorities were eventually able to track him down and he was arrested in September.
Chacon, represented by Jessica Armstrong of the Staunton Public Defender’s Office, remains at Middle River Regional Jail in Verona, where he has been held since his arrest. A sentencing date has yet to be set.
The Eagle Game Room, which offered “skill games,” has since closed.
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Brad Zinn is the cops, courts and breaking news reporter at The News Leader. Have a news tip? Or something that needs investigating? You can email reporter Brad Zinn (he/him) at bzinn@newsleader.com. You can also follow him on X (formerly Twitter).
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