http://www.al.com/news/press-register/index.ssf?/base/news/1184750155307550.xml&coll=3
Mother, daughter raped
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
By ROBERT McCLENDON
Staff Reporter
A man broke into a Prichard home early Tuesday morning and made a woman and her 14-year-old daughter remove their clothes and perform sexual acts on each other before raping them both, police said.
Authorities said the man jimmied a bedroom window open so quietly that the victims didn't know there was a prowler until he was already inside at 3:30 a.m.
Police said the man did not brandish a weapon but threatened the mother and daughter with bodily harm.
The victims' names were being withheld to protect their identity.
Three other children were in the house at the time, but they were not harmed and didn't witness the crime, Prichard police Maj. Pat Mitchell said.
Police had not identified the assailant as of Tuesday evening.
They described him as a middle-aged black male with a dark complexion and a burn scar on the right side of his face, near his eye. Police said he stood about 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighed about 140 pounds.
Mitchell said investigators do not believe the victims knew their attacker.
"All information suggests that it was a random act," he said.
Residents of the neighborhood where the crime occurred, which is just north of the old Mattie T. Blount High School in the city's center, were stunned by the news.
Nearly all the houses there are well-maintained, and many sport landscaped yards and patios bedecked with wicker furniture.
Resident Marie Davis, who was unaware of the break-in until she saw a television report, said she had lived in that area for 40 years and never heard of any violent crimes on the scale of Tuesday's double rape.
"Lord have mercy, that's so wrong. Just so wrong," she said. "It's scary because a lot of women are alone around here. We try to watch out for one another."
Eighteen-year-old Roderick James lives in the neighborhood, along with his mother and brother, not far from the scene of the crime. He said he was surprised to hear that something like that happened in his neighborhood. The news made him fear for his own mother's safety.
"I'd probably go crazy if something like that happened to my mom," he said. "I guess you never know who is walking the streets."
A similar crime occurred earlier this month in West Palm Beach, Fla. In that case, masked thugs stormed into a woman's apartment, raped her repeatedly and forced her at gunpoint to perform sex acts on her 12-year-old son.
Police have arrested three teenagers in connection with that crime and are seeking seven more who investigators say were also involved.
Mitchell said police were considering the possibility that Tuesday's attack was a copycat crime, meant to emulate the Florida incident, but he said they didn't have any direct evidence that was the case.
"Right now we are treating it as an isolated incident," he said.
Anyone with information pertaining to this crime is asked to contact police at 452-2211 or 452-7906.
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I hope they catch him and he burns in hell
<br /><br /><br />"We're all fucked. It helps to remember that."<br />- George Carlin