A preliminary hearing scheduled Thursday for a county school bus driver accused of taking a 15-year-old Sale Creek Middle/High School student to a motel room and raping her never happened.
Instead, the forcible rape case against 34-year-old Alexander Rodriquez – who appeared in Hamilton County Sessions Court in a bright orange jail jumpsuit – was bound over to the grand jury by Judge David Bales.
Rodriquez’s bond remains set at $350,000.
The case grew out of an incident on March 4, when the teenager – who had been seen boarding the school bus – was reported missing around 9:30 p.m.
According to the girl’s statement to Hamilton County Sheriff’s investigators after she finally returned home, she stayed on the school bus with Rodriquez until it arrived back where buses are kept when not in use.
After that, she told them, she got in Rodriquez’s car with him and they drove to the Super 8 Motel in Ooltewah where he registered and got a room.
She told officers Rodriquez first forced her to perform oral sex on him, and then raped her.
When she complained that it hurt, she said, he responded that he was “trying to make it hurt.”
After he received a phone call later that evening asking if he knew where she was, she said, he drove her to Birchwood and put her out of the car. She said it took her about an hour to walk to her home, which she finally reached around 10:15 p.m.