VISTA, Calif. — Calling former NFL player Kellen Winslow II “a sexual predator,” a Vista judge on Wednesday sentenced the namesake son of the Chargers’ legend to 14 years in prison for his 2019 convictions for rape and other crimes involving sexual misconduct.
Winslow — once a first-round NFL draft pick and later the highest paid tight-end in the league — must also register as a sex offender for life.
Winslow’s sentence was expected. He had been looking at a range between 12 to 18 years after his conviction for raping a homeless woman and other charges, convictions reached at trial and through guilty pleas.
The final sentencing decision was to be at the discretion of Superior Court Judge Blaine Bowman. But last week, Winslow — the namesake son of the Chargers’ legend — agreed to a deal that capped his prison sentence at 14 years.
In court Wednesday, Bowman, who presided over the trial, dismissed statements from Winslow’s attorney that Winslow’s behavior could have stemmed from repeated head trauma sustained from years of football, noting that one of the incidents happened before the defendant’s pro career.
“That leaves us with someone who can only be described in two words — and that is a sexual predator,” Bowman said. “That’s what Kellen Winslow II is. He’s a sexual predator. He preys on vulnerable victims and is very brazen in the way he carries out his crimes.”
Shortly before Bowman handed down the sentence, Winslow, 37, declined to make a statement, citing his attorney’s advice.
“In the future, I do plan to tell my story,” Winslow told Bowman.
In all, Winslow was convicted of crimes involving five victims.
One of them, a homeless woman who Winslow befriended in 2018, spoke during the hearing, which was done via video in light of COVID-19 concerns. A jury found Winslow guilty of raping the then-58-year-old woman, who testified that she’d agreed to get coffee with Winslow but he instead drove his Hummer to a secluded spot and attacked her.
“That man is not a good man,” the woman said Wednesday. “I don’t think you know how truly dangerous that man is.”
She spoke of living in continual fear. “If you don’t think rape affects a human being, you’re damn wrong,” she said.
The judge also heard from a 54-year-old Encinitas resident who’d been hitchhiking for a ride down the street when Winslow picked her up in March 2018. She said he assaulted her behind a shopping center.
“I was so scared when he raped me,” the woman wrote in the letter, which Deputy District Attorney Dan Owens read aloud. “He scared me so bad, knowing now that he was my neighbor, and I couldn’t believe that an NFL football player would take advantage of me.
In June 2018, Winslow was arrested and accused of raping the homeless woman and the hitchhiker, as well as of committing other offenses targeting women in coastal North County. The Encinitas resident pleaded not guilty.
A year later, his trial ended with a split verdict. A North County jury found him guilty of raping the homeless woman. The panel also found he’d exposed himself to a 57-year-old neighbor and had committed lewd behavior in front of a 77-year-old woman in a Carlsbad gym.
But the jury deadlocked on other charges, including the alleged rape of the hitchhiker.
Five months later, as his retrial was about to start — the jury was waiting in the hallway — Winslow agreed to plead guilty to two charges: sexual battery of the hitchhiker and the 2003 rape of an unconscious teen when he was 19 years old and a college football player.
The sexual battery plea was later dismissed and replaced with a guilty plea to assault with the intent to commit rape on the same woman, in order to come to a 14-year sentence.
Winslow had been scheduled to be sentenced March 2020, but COVID-19 closures and other postponements pushed the hearing back a year.
Winslow grew up in San Diego and attended Patrick Henry and Scripps Ranch high schools before attending the University of Miami. The sixth draft pick in 2004, he played in the NFL for 10 seasons, until 2013.
