Charges: 3 Lakebay teens raped girl and recorded assault

Three Lakebay teens were charged Tuesday with second-degree rape and second-degree assault in the recorded sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl.

The News Tribune is not naming the defendants because they are underage. They are ages 13, 14 and 17 and are being held in Remann Hall.

The trio was arrested days after the March 14 attack in a shed behind the girl’s home during a small gathering.

Detectives said the three were inside the shed with the victim, her 14-year-old sister and two others at the time of the attack.

Charging papers give this account:

One of the teens went to the house at some point to tell the girl’s mother what was happening.

When the mother approached the shed, she saw the 13-year-old and 17-year-old leap out a window and run. The 14-year-old was still inside the shed.

The victim was curled on the floor, half naked and covered in blood. Her sweatpants had been ripped off.

The girl told her mother she had been drinking vodka with the others and must have passed out because she couldn’t remember much. She reported severe pain so her mother took her to the hospital.

The girl’s sister told investigators she was sleeping but awoke to her sister screaming.

She reported seeing one of the teens tie the victim’s ankles with a cord from a hair straightener and then drag her around the floor of the shed.

Someone recorded the assault on Snapchat and sent at least two short video clips and two photographs to friends of the victim’s sister, Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said.

Snapchat is a popular video-and-photo-sharing application that deletes the images after two seconds.

At least two people received the images.

The teens used a lighter to burn smiley faces on the girl’s body and sexually assaulted her, records show.

At one point, the 14-year-old went into the house to wash the victim’s blood off his hands. The mother saw him washing his hands but didn’t realize he had blood on him.

The day after the assault, the 13-year-old and the 17-year-old ran into the mother of the victim at a coffee shop and stopped to ask how her daughter was.

The older boy told the mom “that if he got in trouble for what happened in the shed, he would go after her family and he would kill her,” documents state.

Prosecutors said they might upgrade the charges after investigators finish analyzing cellphones and other evidence and after the results of the rape kit exam come back.

This story was originally published March 22, 2016 at 10:40 AM with the headline "Charges: 3 Lakebay teens raped girl and recorded assault."