A 20-year-old man pleaded no contest to sexually assaulting two women in Bellflower and a 14-year-old Lakewood High student last year, with two of the incidents only hours apart, officials said Tuesday.
Joshua Dwight Cooper of Bellflower entered the plea Monday and was immediately sentenced to 29 years and four months in state prison, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
The defendant was also ordered to register as a sex offender for the remainder of his life.
Cooper was convicted on one count each of assault with intent to commit rape, assault with intent to commit rape on a person under 18 with a great bodily injury allegation, forcible oral copulation and forcible sodomy.
He also pleaded no contest to burglary of an occupied residence in a separate case, prosecutors said.
The first assault Cooper was accused of occurred in August 2018, when he allegedly attacked a 42-year-old woman on a walking path behind the Bellflower courthouse.
Later that month, on Aug. 31, Cooper sexually assaulted another woman walking in Bellflower, this time a 29-year-old in the 9200 block of Palm Street, the DA’s office said. He also allegedly took that victim’s cellphone.
Less than two hours later, he attacked a teenage girl who was using the restroom at Lakewood High School. Cooper fled when a campus employee came into the room, investigators said.
A month before the first sex assault, Cooper broke into an apartment in Santa Fe Springs but fled when the victim confronted him, according to prosecutors.