Santa Maria man who planned to meet teen in SLO County sex sting sentenced to jail time
A Santa Maria man was sentenced Tuesday to 180 days in San Luis Obispo County Jail for arranging online to meet with a teenage girl who turned out to be an Arroyo Grande police officer.
Kent Solorio Feliciano, 27, was initially charged in early March with a felony count of arranging to meet a minor for lewd purposes, as well as a misdemeanor count of arranging to meet a minor.
On June 8, Feliciano agreed to plead no contest to the misdemeanor charge in exchange for the dismissal of the felony count. He had previously pleaded not guilty.
As a result, Feliciano was sentenced at a hearing Tuesday to three years of supervised probation and 180 days in San Luis Obispo County Jail. Due to automatic custody credits, he will likely serve no more than three months.
Had he been convicted of both counts, Feliciano faced at least two years in state prison.
He was arrested in February as part of a police sting after showing up at an undisclosed location in Arroyo Grande for a meeting he set up with a person he thought was a 15-year-old girl.
The criminal complaint filed by the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office on Feb. 28 alleges that Feliciano “did unlawfully and motivated by an unusual and abnormal sexual interest in children,” arrange a meeting with a person whom he believed to be a teen, “to engage in lewd and lascivious behavior.”
He was arrested by Arroyo Grande police on Feb. 19, according to court records, and released from jail after posting $25,000 bail.
Feliciano’s defense attorney, Adrienne Haddad, could not be reached for comment Wednesday morning.
Arroyo Grande Police Chief Beau Pryor previously would not comment on the case after prosecutors charged Feliciano, but the Arroyo Grande Police Department has been aggressive in its pursuit of sexual predators online.
In 2019, a former pastor from Canada was tried in San Luis Obispo Superior Court and found guilty by a jury of one felony charge of meeting with a minor after coordinating online to rendezvous for sex at an undisclosed location with what turned out to be an Arroyo Grande police detective.
Nathan Rieger, 54, was sentenced in February 2019 to two years in a California prison, but has since been released.
