Jury delivers not-guilty verdict in Bridgeport rape case

BRIDGEPORT — A young woman burst into tears in the courtroom Friday as a jury found the man accused of raping her not guilty.

“You know you did it,” the Massachusetts woman cried moments after the 6-member Superior Court jury found 29-year-old Gimel Anderson, of Hawley Avenue, not guilty of aggravated first-degree sexual assault, first-degree strangulation, and first-degree unlawful restraint.

The jury did find Anderson guilty of third-degree assault after he admitted beating the woman.

“I don’t know how you sleep at night, do you see my bloody face in your dreams?” the woman cried.

Anderson has been in prison since November 2018 waiting for the case to come to trial. Judge Earl Richards sentenced him to a year in prison on the assault conviction and issued him an order to have no further contact with the woman.

“He has always maintained his innocence and now looks forward to going home to his family,” said his lawyer, Public Defender Bradley Buchta said later as he left the Fairfield County Courthouse. “It was a fair and just verdict.”

Anderson testified he had consensual sex with the woman but then hit her after they got into a fight.

On Oct. 20, 2018, Springfield, Mass., police were called to a hospital there for an assault victim. Police said a young woman had bruises on her face and throat and cuts on her head that requires stitches.

Police said the woman told them she contacted Anderson through the dating website Tagged and arranged to come to Bridgeport to meet him.

The woman picked up Anderson at his home. Police said he was carrying a bottle of beer, got into the woman’s car and then directed her to drive to Seaside Park, ostensibly so they could watch the sunset.

However, once they parked there, police said, Anderson began choking the woman and hit her in the head with the beer bottle. He then pulled off her clothes and raped her, police said.

Before leaving the victim’s car, police said, Anderson took a photo with his cell phone of her driver’s license and threatened that he would come to her home and kill her if she went to police.

The woman then drove to the hospital near her home in Springfield.