Spanaway man accused of raping 17-year-old girl he met online
A 41-year-old Spanaway man is accused of meeting a teenage girl online and sexually assaulting her when they met in person in Tacoma.
He pleaded not guilty Thursday to three counts of first-degree rape, first-degree kidnapping and felony harassment.
Pierce County Superior Court Judge James Orlando ordered the man held on $500,000 bail.
He is banned from being near children other than his two daughters.
Charging papers give this account:
The man began speaking with the 17-year-old girl via the Kik app, a popular messaging app that shields its users’ identities.
They chatted about horses and made a plan to meet April 2 outside a neighborhood market in the 4800 block of North 45th Street.
The two did not exchange any sexual messages, but he did ask her if she liked “wedgies,” records say.
The 17-year-old, who has autism and has the developmental age of 15, rode her bicycle to meet the man.
Surveillance footage acquired by police later show the teen getting into a man’s car.
The two drove around for 45 minutes before he stopped in a parking lot, sexually assaulted her and dropped her back off near the market.
As she called 911 for help, he drove back in her direction and said “that he was going to kill her ‘right then and there,’” prosecutors wrote in charging papers.
The teen was taken to Tacoma General Hospital to be examined.
Her father later told police she couldn’t even walk down the stairs after the attack because she was in too much pain.
Detectives were able to identify the man thanks to surveillance footage, a social media account and interactions he had with an undercover officer posing online as a 19-year-old woman.
The man, who was arrested Wednesday, told police he’d never seen the girl before.
DNA results that could definitively link him to the teen’s assault are pending.
This story was originally published May 8, 2020 at 3:22 PM.
