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Julius Melendez took the stand in his battery trial Tuesday at the Osceola County Courthouse. PHOTO/KEN JACKSON
A jury of four men and four women found Osceola County School Board member Julius Melendez not guilty of battery Tuesday in a case brought by a then 18-year-old woman who accused him of making unwanted romantic advances, and then kissing her after she asked him not to.
The misdemeanor trial, the definition of a “he said, she said,” case, centered around how Isabella LeBlanc, 19, a former barista at downtown Kissimmee’s Susana’s Café Melendez used to co-manage, accused him of pouring her mimosas at the café after hours. She said they continued the drinking after they went to his house, where she said the unwanted kiss took place.
She fought back tears as she told the court about the details of June 29, 2023, relaying that Melendez, 45, offered a place to stay at his home because she noted a problem getting to and from work. Along the way they stopped at the café to check her schedule, and she said Melendez grabbed the drinks from a back-room refrigerator that only staff had access to–the café has no liquor license. The two reportedly consumed some there, then took the rest to Melendez’s home. There, she said Melendez touched a tattoo on her thigh and, despite her telling him not to, kissed her, and made her feel so uncomfortable that she left early the next morning. LeBlanc was emotional in recalling the incident.
Under cross-examination, Melendez’s defense team investigated the notion that LeBlanc had asked to stay with Melendez at his house to avoid her “alcoholic, abusive” stepfather who made a drunk appearance at the café. The defense noted that, when she left his house early the following morning in an Uber, she had to pass the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, but did not stop in to make a complaint. She filed that complaint two days later, not with law enforcement but to the Osceola County School District. In the complaint she cited state statutes and violations of School District policies, before meeting with detectives on July 5, after the School District passed it on to authorities.
“I didn’t want something to happen to someone else,” LeBlanc said as the reason for her making the complaint, in which she said she was sexually assaulted. “I used that term because kissing, to me, is sexual. I felt like he had sexual intentions.”
On the stand, Melendez noted that the café had a direct product line from a Costa Rican farm, and workers from there were helping launch product and he let them, along with another Susana’s barista, stay at his five-bedroom home, so having LeBlanc stay there was not out of the ordinary.
He admitted to “feeling a vibe” during the evening, that he did check out the tattoo, and asked to kiss her. She rebuffed him, and he said nothing progressed beyond that. When LeBlanc texted her the following morning making the accusations and demanding he not contact her, he said he thought he, “Fell into a trap.”
Elaborating, he said that those trying to create a political downfall–those who had previously worked for the School District, and he mentioned former School Board Attorney Frank Kruppenbacher by name–may have been working behind this.
Melendez had also been charged with serving alcohol to a person under 21 in the incident, but prosecutors dropped the charge after Melendez’s defense team filed a motion to dismiss the charge, noting per the state statute, prosecutors are required to establish that selling, giving or serving the alcohol “must occur on a licensed premise.”
Melendez represents district 2 on the School Board. That seat will be up for election this year; Melendez has yet to file for re-election. He noted during the trial that the case had hampered his planned re-election campaign.
