Woman: Teens laughed as raped, beat her
WEST PALM BEACH (AP) – A woman told a jury Wednesday she prayed for her life and cried in pain as she was repeatedly raped in her bedroom and beaten with guns – all as she listened to her son scream as he was assaulted down the hall.
Speaking softly, pausing occasionally for heavy breaths, the woman recounted the terrifying events the night of June 18, 2007, in her apartment at a public housing complex a few miles from downtown West Palm Beach.
“I was crying and telling them that hurts,” she said during the trial of two men accused in the case.
Nathan Walker, 18, and Tommy Lee Poindexter, 20, are facing 14 counts, including sexual battery, burglary, kidnapping, grand theft and promoting sexual performance of a child. Avion Lawson, a 14-year-old middle schooler at the time of the crime, pleaded guilty in the case and testified against Poindexter and Walker. A fourth defendant, now 17-year-old Jakaris Taylor, is set for trial next month.
All the defendants were teens at the time, but are charged as adults. They could spend life in prison if convicted.
The woman testified she and her son, then 12, had returned to the Dunbar Village housing project that evening, and soon heard a knock on the door.
A young boy said her car had two flat tires. The woman said she went outside with her son, but the vehicle was fine.
“I said, ‘How come you told me I had two flat tires,’ and he told me, ‘I’m sorry ma’am,'” she said.
Then the horror began.
Two masked men with guns stepped out from the shadows. Then another arrived. They forced her and her son back inside.
“They told me if I make noise, they would kill me,” the woman said in a thick Haitian accent, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses. “They point a gun at me, told me they would shoot me.”
They demanded money, but she didn’t have any – the victims had fled even worse poverty in their native Haiti several years earlier. She begged for her life.
Soon, she was taken into her bedroom and beaten and sodomized by one masked person with a rifle. Then the other two came in and raped her.
“I was crying and praying at the same time,” she said.
Three more masked people then came into her room and raped her, she said. Then four more. In all, she said, 10 people raped, sodomized and beat her.
“Was anybody laughing?” asked prosecutor Aleathea McRoberts.
“Yes … all of them were laughing,” the woman said.
Meanwhile, other suspects were beating her son in another room.
After several hours, they were both forced into the bathtub and told to wash off, she said.
She said she was then forced to perform oral sex on her son before the suspects doused them with cleaning solutions.