A senior chief petty officer is facing multiple charges after he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman in 2018 and went on the lam a year later.
Before he was nabbed on Oct. 9, Construction Mechanic Senior Chief Luis Humberto Garcia, Jr. also allegedly called a superior commissioned officer a “dick," according to charge sheets.
Garcia, 47, is accused of deserting his Gulfport, Mississippi-based Seventh Naval Construction Regiment around Sept. 27, 2019.
The charge sheets do not indicate where Garcia was caught or who detained him. Navy officials did not provide additional details about the case against the senior enlisted leader when asked by Navy Times.
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It appears Garcia’s troubles began about Sept. 16, 2018 while at Naval Base Guam.
According to charge sheets, that’s when Garcia allegedly sexually assaulted a woman. He’s also accused on that same day of committing a sexual act on a woman who was impaired by alcohol and unable to consent.
Prosecutors also allege that on Sept. 16, 2018 Garcia violated a lawful regulation when he kissed someone’s neck and said to the person “let me see it (expletive).”
It is unclear if the charges from 2018 involve more than one alleged victim. Navy officials did not provide additional clarification.
Investigators allege that a little more than a year later, Garcia disobeyed an order from a superior commissioned officer when he contacted someone named in a military protective order on multiple occasions from about Sept. 20 through Oct. 9.
It’s also unclear if the person named in the protective order was involved in the 2018 incidents.
Both Garcia’s military attorney, Lt. Cmdr. Michael Collett, and a prosecutor, Lt. Cmdr. Robert McRight, have declined to comment on the case.
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Garcia has been held in pretrial confinement.
A court-martial trial is scheduled April 6 through 10, according to Stephen Strickland, a spokesman for Navy Region Southeast.
A Navy Region Southeast spokeswoman, Arwen FitzGerald, said that officials dropped charges that accused Garcia of threatening a woman multiple times between Sept. 26 and Sept. 30 to distribute nude photos of her on social media.
According to a Navy biography, Garcia enlisted in 1994 and has been assigned to the 7th Regiment since April 2019.
He previously worked with the Gulfport-based Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 1 from June 2017 through April 2019.
He has also was assigned to two tours with Naval Special Warfare Development Group, also known as SEAL Team 6, based at Dam Neck, in Virginia, from January 2000 to October 2004 and again from July 2013 to April 2017.
Courtney Mabeus-Brown is the senior reporter at Air Force Times. She is an award-winning journalist who previously covered the military for Navy Times and The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., where she first set foot on an aircraft carrier. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and more.
