A longtime employee and maintenance worker at Royal Oaks Country Club is accused of hiding a cellphone in a restroom to secretly record a woman using the toilet.
Jorge L. Moreno-Palma, 39, of Vancouver appeared Thursday in Clark County Superior Court on suspicion of voyeurism in connection with a Feb. 19 incident. His bail was set at $2,500, and he will be arraigned March 17, court records show.
Club manager Marcia LaFond said Thursday that Moreno-Palma is no longer employed at Royal Oaks, 8917 N.E. Fourth Plain Blvd. She said she could not comment further, citing the criminal case.
A 42-year-old woman reported that she had been golfing with a friend when she used a restroom near the 16th hole tee box. The victim told police that while she was seated, she saw what looked like a lens pointing out of the vent directly across from the toilet. The woman’s friend entered the restroom, they removed the vent and found a phone that had been recording for about four minutes, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
Vancouver police responded and collected the phone from the club’s golf course superintendent, Gordon Kiyokawa, who said he recognized the male in the phone’s home screen photo as Moreno-Palma. Kiyokawa said he reviewed the video, which recorded a male from the chest down as he placed the phone in the vent, the affidavit says.
About an hour after the phone was found, Moreno-Palma came to Kiyokawa and said he had made a mistake. Kiyokawa noted that Moreno-Palma wore the same jacket and shirt as the male seen in the video, the court document states.
Moreno-Palma allegedly told Kiyokawa that he placed the phone in the vent after hearing strange noises in the restroom, court records say.
Police met with the victim the next day. She said there are a limited number of restrooms on the golf course. She remembered seeing several maintenance employees working nearby. They would have seen her and her friend golfing at Hole 15, she said, shortly before they reached the restroom. She also recalled seeing a Hispanic male employee walk out of the men’s restroom as she walked up, according to the affidavit.
After obtaining a search warrant, investigators found a video four minutes and 47 seconds in length. Within three minutes of the phone being placed, the victim is seen in the restroom, the affidavit states.
