An 18-year-old student has been sentenced to nearly a year behind bars for groping several of his female classmates at Fairfax High School in Northern Virginia.
Israel Flores Ortiz was found guilty of nine counts of misdemeanor assault and battery in Fairfax County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court on April 10. He was sentenced to 360 days in prison on Tuesday with credit for the time served.
He was initially charged with 13 counts of inappropriately touching girls in crowded hallways. In court last week, surveillance video was played that showed Flores-Ortiz touching the girls.
Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said at a news conference after the sentencing hearing Tuesday afternoon that what happened in the case was “unacceptable” and his office decided to pursue prosecution because Flores-Ortiz “systematically” and repeatedly attacked those girls.
Flores-Ortiz, a junior at the high school, entered the country illegally from El Salvador in 2024. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in social media posts that if he’s released, “ICE stands ready to take him into custody and deport” him.
“Critics think that people in prosecutorial offices have unlimited power and that’s not the case. We are bound by evidence. We are bound by the rules of the law. We’re bound by the Constitution. What we do every day is we try to build community safety, but of course, we have to do that within the law and every decision that we make in every case is driven solely by what the law says we’re allowed to do,” Descano said in response to a question about immigration enforcement.
Demetry Pikrallidas, an attorney representing one of the students in the case, said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon, there is “no place for politics” in the case.
“Every case has its own facts, and in this case, it’s somebody who happened to be, as people say, ‘illegal.’ And when that intersects with illegality, there’s a segment of our population that doesn’t like that. We can’t ignore that. … Whether it was George Washington or this individual, I’m going to protect my client,” Pikrallidas said, adding that his only goal was to get justice for his client.
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