Background: A still from a video shows the victim fighting off who authorities say is Adrian Ayala outside her home in Buckeye, Arizona (Nest/KPNX/YouTube). Inset: Zarian Dyer (Maricopa County Sheriff's Office).
After Arizona authorities claimed an apparent assault on a woman at her home was not a random attack but rather one orchestrated by her fiance, she came to his defense.
Zarian Dyer, the fiance, faces charges including aggravated assault, kidnapping, sexual abuse, attempted sexual assault and conspiracy, the Buckeye Police Department announced on Oct. 29. The 23-year-old man was arrested at his workplace and appeared in court for the second time on Wednesday.
Adrian Ayala, 20, the man accused of attacking the woman, has been charged with aggravated assault, kidnapping, sexual abuse and attempted sexual assault, according to Maricopa County court records reviewed by Law&Crime.
On Oct. 16, a woman said she was at her home in Buckeye, Arizona, with her two children.
She told local news collective Arizona's Family that she was preparing to go trunk-or-treating with her kids as her fiance went to a store down the street. She said she heard her front door alarm and thought he'd returned, but soon realized it wasn't him.
Instead, an "unknown man walked into her house and attacked her," police said. She fought off the man, who police say was Ayala, in an incident captured on camera.
"What the fâ is wrong with you?" she asked the man as she forced him outside and tried to keep him at arm's length, per the video obtained by regional NBC affiliate KPNX. She smacked him before the suspect made a startling allegation.
"Your boyfriend sent me," he allegedly said twice â much to her incredulity. "He told me he was into this ⌠you were into this," the man reportedly added, also allegedly claiming he was on drugs.
"Right, right," she responded, asking for the name of her partner.
"I don't know. He sent me a picture," Ayala allegedly responded before later adding, "It was on Reddit."
Police say Ayala not only attacked the woman but also kicked her 17-month-old daughter. Dyer could be seen in the video returning to the home and running toward his fiance.
Officers say Ayala left the area before they arrived, but the following day, they found him at his home in Goodyear, Arizona, and arrested him.
Goodyear, Arizona, is about 15 miles east of Buckeye, with both cities being suburbs of Phoenix.
"At the time of the arrest, Ayala claimed he went to the victim's home after meeting her fiance online and entering into an agreement with him to sexually assault the victim," police said. Investigators took Ayala's "electronic devices" and a phone belonging to Dyer.
They said data from these devices showed "evidence that Ayala and Dyer were communicating about the planned assault," though a motive was unclear.
The woman, however, defended her fiance in court on Wednesday.
"My partner was forced to deal with false accusations fabricated by the defendant during his frantic attempt to make excuses," she said, per Arizona's Family.
Prosecutors, however, maintain that Dyer told Ayala where the house was and that he went to the store to kill time.
Dyer has a preliminary hearing scheduled for Friday.
Ayala has a pretrial conference on Dec. 22.