A San Antonio man has been charged with the sexual assault of 68-year-old neighbor after his mother gave him up to authorities.
Prior to the attack, the suspect allegedly asked her to urinate in the toilet because he enjoyed the sound.
Gino Anthony Bononcini, 29, was arrested Friday by Bexar County Sheriff’s deputies in Texas. The assault occurred on April 25, according to authorities.
According to a report, it was the suspect’s mother who gave a statement to investigators implicating her son.
The suspect’s mother, Roxanne Bononcini, said that her son told her that he had ‘violated’ their neighbor after entering through a window in her home at around 4 a.m., reports the San Antonio Express-News.
The victim said that she was sleeping on her couch when she awoke to use the bathroom. When she got up, she saw the suspect standing in the hallway.
The woman said that she recognized the suspect as someone who was regularly at a neighbor’s home. Two weeks before the assault, the victim said that she saw the suspect a friend’s barbecue.
She asked the suspect: ‘Who’s there?’ The victim only speaks Spanish, according to documents.
When she screamed ‘Don’t kill me,’ the suspect put his finger over mouth and said: ‘Shut up.’
The suspect proceeded to tell her to urinate in the toilet as he enjoyed the sound. From there, he took the woman to a bed and raped her, the woman told detectives.
According to his Facebook page, Bononcini is a native of San Antonio and works at the Methodist Children’s Hospital in the city.
A few days before the attack, Bononcini posted a meme promoting the virtues of tantric sex.
The suspect and his mother regularly exchanged memes over Facebook with his mother commenting with laughing face emojis.
In another post, Bononcini wrote: ‘My one and only momma. Roxanne Rox.’
In response to a photoshopped picture that Bononcini posted on his Facebook page in 2021, his mother wrote: ‘Love it,’ ‘You’re freaking hilarious’ and ‘This is hilarious.’
Under another picture, Bononcini’s mother wrote: ‘My #1 son. So proud of you.’
The victim had described the suspect to authorities as a thinly built man with short hair, tattoos on his chest and upper arms, in his 30s and standing around 5-foot-10.
Bononcini was linked to the crime through a DNA swab that was compared against crime scene evidence. The swab obtained on June 7 with a warrant. He was arrested as soon as the results came back, the sheriff said.
Sheriff Salazar said at a press conference: ‘The DNA sampling that we got came to us and it’s basically one in 69 sextillion chances that this could be the suspect.’
He added: ‘The way that it was perpetrated… he seemed very, very comfortable.’
He also said that due to the nature of the sexual assault, they’re asking for other potential victims to come forward. The sheriff said: ‘We felt the need to publicize it (Bononcini’s arrest) in the hopes that somebody may have seen him lurking around or know of other attacks he may have been involved in.’
A conviction of first degree sexual assault in Texas can carry anywhere between five years in prison and a life sentence.
According to statistics from the city, sexual assaults have more than doubled in San Antonio in over the past 10 years.