The alleged victim of a November 2015 rape gave a chilling account Tuesday to a Miller County jury of the night a gun-wielding man pushed his way into her Texarkana, Ark., house.
The woman, then 33, told the jury of eight men and four women that there was something familiar about the man who wore a tightly-drawn hoodie, sunglasses, a mask and gloves but it wasn't until after an arrest was made that she realized her alleged attacker was Vasquez Dominique Hayes, a 22-year-old man to whom she'd taught history and English at a local parochial school years before.
The woman testified under questioning by Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Connie Mitchell that she wasn't feeling well the night of Nov. 21, 2015, and decided to take a shower sometime after midnight. The woman said she attributed a jumpy, paranoid feeling she felt to the sounds of a windy night and stray animals prowling her backyard. At about 1 a.m., the woman said, her miniature schnauzer began sniffing and barking at the back door. Believing he needed a bathroom break, she proceeded to let him out.
"I chided myself for being silly but I got my gun. No harm in taking it with me," the woman testified.
The woman, who has a concealed-handgun license, had to set her 9 mm pistol on top of the dryer to wrangle the older house's fussy doorknob. When she opened it, the door blocked the dryer on which her handgun rested, and revealed a masked man.
"When I saw the (man's) gun I put my hands up. I didn't want him to think he had to shoot me. He said, 'It's OK, it's OK, just go back inside the house,'" the woman testified.
The woman said that as the armed intruder guided her back into her Dudley Street house, she thought, "The faster I get him out of the house, the better my chance of survival was."
The alleged victim said she offered her assailant her purse, laptop, desktop computer, digital camera and more, hoping he would take her property and leave. After hearing the masked man tell her to go to her bedroom, the woman said she again listed her valuables, hoping she had misunderstood. The attacker spun her around, put his gun to her temple and walked her to her bedroom as if he already knew where it was, the alleged victim testified.
"I thought maybe I can convince him this isn't what he wants. I told him, 'I'm not skinny, I'm not pretty, I'm not that young,'" the woman testified.
The woman said the man repeatedly threatened to kill her if she didn't comply with his demands and threatened to shoot her dog when the animal protectively tried to get between them.
"He said, 'I have a silencer on this gun and I can kill you and your dog and nobody will know,'" the alleged victim testified.
To save her pet, the woman put him in a crate. The woman then gave an account of brutal sexual assaults that which profane and abusive language. Courtroom observers were moved to tears.
"He was aggravated. He acted like I shouldn't be disgusted," the woman testified. "I remember feeling like after a while I wasn't even part of my own body. I thought something was wrong with me because I started to feel numb."
The woman said she thought her rapist was about to kill her when he asked her where he could find her money. The woman, who testified she uses a debit card to make most purchases, was then forced to get dressed and take a ride in her own car when the attacker learned she had no cash.
The woman said she pulled a dress over her night shirt and bra, the only clothing the attacker had not removed, and was ordered to put on shoes. The woman said the man drove her black 2010 Nissan Altima to an ATM at the Trinity Boulevard branch of Red River Credit Union and backed in so that her window faced the machine. After handing the man $500, the maximum daily withdrawal permitted, the man refused to immediately set her free, the woman testified.
"I said, 'There is nothing left for you to take from me,' and he said, 'Shut the (expletive) up (expletive) and raise up that window,'" the alleged victim testified. "As we were driving along 71 he said, 'Why don't I just throw you in the river?'"
The woman said the man's driving became erratic after he spotted a group of police officers working a car accident. While attempting to turn around in a church parking lot, Hayes allegedly struck a welded pipe gate, shattering a portion of the windshield and damaging the car's hood.
The woman also said her attacker finally and abruptly pulled to the wrong side of a residential street and told her to "get out."
The alleged victim said she quickly took the opportunity and ran into a clump of bushes, watching in terror as the man sped away in her car. The woman then knocked on the closest door.
Deanna Cardenas said it was around 2:30 a.m. when banging on her front door roused her from sleep. Cardenas described the alleged victim as, "frantic, shaking all over" and begging her to call police as she crouched on the porch as if hiding from someone.
Former Texarkana, Ark., Police Department officer Levi Saxby testified that he could barely understand the woman when he approached her on the porch of the Cardenas' home on Fairview and that she "appeared to have just suffered a major trauma."
A body-camera video played for the jury showed the victim sobbing hysterically as she covers her face with her hands. Saxby can be heard asking emergency dispatchers to initiate a "Be On the Lookout" to other officers after being told of the car theft. The woman's car was discovered two days later in a Texarkana, Ark., apartment complex parking lot.
The woman described her attacker as either white with very tan skin or Hispanic, though something about his speech made her think he might be African American. The woman was driven by her pastor and church friends to CHRISTUS St. Michael's Health System for treatment at about 4:45 a.m. The woman said that after waiting hours in the emergency room, she endured an invasive and uncomfortable sexual-assault examination which began at 7:15 a.m.
"It was like a second rape," the woman testified.
The alleged victim testified she was shocked when Texarkana, Ark., Detective Jason Haak called her days after the attack and asked if she recognized the name Vasquez Hayes. The woman said her former home on Dudley Street is so close to the Apostolic Lighthouse Church, where she taught from approximately 2006 to 2009, that some of the younger children thought she lived at the church. The woman said Hayes, who was about 12 when he was a student, was among many youngsters who regularly visited her home and was taken horseback riding by her ex-husband.
Demetri Tommie, 18, testified under questioning from Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Chuck Black that he has been friends with Hayes since he was a young child, attending the same school and church. Tommie said that as a child, Hayes would often say he was going to marry the alleged victim and that Hayes allegedly had an obsession with her that hadn't passed with age. Tommie said Hayes repeatedly talked of his desire for the alleged victim during a fishing trip about a week before the alleged rape.
Under cross examination by Little Rock lawyer Lawrence Walker, Tommie said Hayes continued to steer their "guy talk" back to his former teacher, stopping only when Hayes received a call from his wife telling him it was time to come home. Tommie testified under questioning from Black that Hayes borrowed an air soft pellet pistol from him about two days before the alleged assault, claiming he planned to use it to play a joke on a friend. Under questioning from Black, Tommie identified a photo of a pistol recovered from the victim's car as the one he loaned to Hayes.
After placing the jury in an evening recess, Circuit Judge Carlton Jones addressed a motion for a mistrial made by Walker and his co-counsel, Crystal Okoro of Little Rock. The defense complained that Mitchell referred to the alleged victim as "victim" during her questioning of the nurse who examined the woman. Jones granted a pretrial motion before trial, which had directed the prosecutors to refer to the woman as, "complainant, complaining witness, or alleged victim."
Black pointed out that Mitchell was referring to a medical report that refers to the woman as a sexual assault victim. Jones reviewed case law specifying that a mistrial is an extreme remedy to be used only when an error has deprived a defendant of a fair trial. Jones denied the motion and Walker and Okoro declined to have the jury hear an instruction that could more firmly root the controversy in their minds.
Witness testimony is expected to continue this morning at the Miller County courthouse. For each of two counts of rape, Hayes faces 10 to 40 years or life if convicted. Aggravated residential burglary, aggravated robbery and kidnapping are punishable by 10 to 40 years or life as well. For theft involving the woman's stolen car, Hayes faces three to 10 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000 if convicted. For theft involving the woman's debit card and ATM withdrawal, Hayes faces up to six years in prison and a fine up to $10,000.