Horrifying gang rape & assault on mother & son

[smurfalicious]

I don't know if I've ever been so horrified by what happened in an area so close to home. I had to post this.


I'd like to know your thoughts on trying these "boys" as adults versus juveniles.

Also, I don't know where to even begin with the psychological issues the victims will have to contend with for the rest of their lives...


Police arrest 3rd teen in rape

Friday, July 13, 2007

WEST PALM BEACH — A third teenage suspect has been linked by a fingerprint to the vicious attack on a Dunbar Village woman and her 12-year-old son, during which the woman was gang-raped by as many as 10 school-aged assailants and forced to have sex with her son.

Police arrested Jakaris Taylor, 15, Thursday morning at his mother's apartment in the dilapidated housing project on charges that included armed sexual battery by multiple perpetrators, home invasion robbery with a firearm and wearing a mask while committing an offense.

"I'm just too upset ," said his sobbing mother, Jacqueline Minor, 32, after the arrest. "I can't deal with it."

The arrest of Taylor, who records indicate was a student at Oak Grove Academy, came one week after the arrest of Nathan Walker, 16, and nine days after the arrest of Avion Lawson, 14, whose DNA was found in a condom at the victims' home, police said.

Police said Lawson confessed to participating in the June 18 attack but Walker has not.

Taylor, who was first interviewed by police two days after the attack, initially denied involvement. He gave two additional statements in which he again denied any role, detectives said.

But when a crime scene investigator confirmed Thursday that Taylor's fingerprint was found inside the victims' home - near those of the other suspects - detectives arrested him.

He was picked up just as he was about to go to class at summer school, a family friend said.

Taylor admitted he was at the scene but later refused to speak about the case, detectives said. Like Walker and Lawson, Taylor's case is expected to be referred to a grand jury to ensure adult prison sentences if the boys are convicted.

According to police, the assailants tricked the woman into opening her door by saying her tires were flat, then forced her back into her home.

They allegedly raped her repeatedly, smashed a plate over her son's head, poured household chemicals into his eyes and forced them at gunpoint to have sex with each other. Friends say both are still in physical pain from their injuries.

The 35-year-old and her son moved out of Dunbar Village and have not told friends or relatives where they are staying. The woman is afraid because her attackers said they would find her and set her on fire if she told police what they did, her brother said.

The woman's father said the attackers poured ammonia on his daughter, a suffocating chemical whose gases alone can burn the eyes and lungs, in an attempt to destroy DNA evidence.

Family members said the boy now can see, though excruciating pain remains. Two days after the attack, the boy was immobile in a hospital bed, a 1 1/2 '-inch wound stitched across the top left of his skull and bandages covering both eyes.

The attackers did not seem to know the victims, who kept to themselves because the mother was worried that the neighborhood was unsafe for her son, police said.

Taylor, wearing dark green shorts and a black Michael Jordan T-shirt, smiled at the cameras outside the police station when reporters asked him whether he was guilty.

He was transferred to the Juvenile Assessment Center and will make his first court appearance today.

The arrest left Taylor's family heartbroken.

"I don't understand, I don't believe this," said Taylor's grandmother, Angela Bell, a few minutes after she heard about the arrest. "I'm so sick about this."

Police were able to match Taylor's fingerprint from the scene with prints already in their system from a Jan. 6 arrest on charges of aggravated assault and robbery by sudden snatching in West Palm Beach.

Police said he was among five assailants who attacked two men at Datura Street and Rosemary Avenue, knocking them off their bicycles as they rode home from work.

Minor, his mother, sent him to live with his grandmother on Windsor Avenue so he would stay out of trouble, said a family friend who spent Thursday by Minor's side but refused to give her name.

Taylor is an eighth-grader at Oak Grove, a school in Riviera Beach for students with behavioral problems, according to the family friend. He played youth league football and basketball and was known as a joker who apparently got "hooked up with the wrong crowd in Dunbar," the friend said. His family, including a younger brother and sister, moved to Dunbar from Boynton Beach about three years ago, she continued.

Having heard the police were asking about her son, Minor initially brought Taylor to the police station herself, the friend said. Minor has cooperated since the beginning of the investigation, police said.

Minor has been arrested eight times in Florida on charges that include fraud and making a false statement for public aid.

Taylor's father is deceased, the family friend said.

Investigators are awaiting results of tests done on other evidence from the crime scene.

"We're hoping more of it will come back and link to additional suspects," police spokesman Ted White said. "We've had investigators working 10, 15 and sometimes 20 hours a day, looking through evidence, waiting for it to come back and lead us to more arrests.

"It's been paying off."

After the attack, the mother and son walked several miles to the closest hospital for help. Not a single neighbor, some of whom HAD to have heard the attack through the paper-thin walls of the Section 8 housing, intervened or contacted authorities to stop it. All suspects are believed to be teenagers; the first one arrested was in middle school.