‘It felt like an eternity,’ woman says of 2009 Kettering attack
A woman who said she was raped by a stranger in 2009 testified Tuesday about how she was dragged into a pickup, raped, forced to perform oral sex and dropped off in a Kettering neighborhood.
Ted Mullins, 47, is on trial in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court for several counts of kidnapping and raping the woman — who is not being named by this news organization — in the early morning hours of June 27.
Kettering police have said Mullins was tied to the crime by DNA preserved from the woman’s rape kit. Mullins was arrested July 26, 2017 and is residing in Montgomery County Jail.
The woman, now 33, testified she was going to go to a nearby gas station to get Snickers ice cream bars, but the Speedway was closed. She testified she walked back past her Wilmington Pike apartment and turned onto Marshall Road.
The woman told Montgomery
continued from B1 County assistant prosecutor Kelly Madzey she had headphones on and was listening to music when she saw headlights before, “all of a sudden I have a hand over my mouth and a hand under my chest and I’m being dragged backwards.”
The woman described how one man in the back seat pulled her jeans down and her shirt up and “telling me to shut up” while another person slowly drove the pickup and turned up the music. She said she could only see “trees and rooftops” while being pinned against the bench seat.
The woman testified that her assailant smoked a cigarette after the first rape then flipped her over and raped her again. “It felt like an eternity,” she said.
She said the man smoked another cigarette before forcing her to perform oral sex.
“I was terrified,” she said. “I didn’t care what happened to me. I just wanted to get out of the truck alive.”
The woman testified that she felt her hair being ripped from her head as the man said, “If you bite me I’ll knock your teeth out.”
She said she was kicked out of the truck because “I was taking too much time to put my clothes on.”
The woman testified that she remembered her shirt was pulled up, she was half-naked and she was wearing one shoe when she thought: “This is where I die.”
The woman said she watched the pickup as it drove away and identified it as a gray Dodge Ram with construction equipment and a metal rack.
The woman said she called police upon returning to her apartment building and was taken to a Kettering hospital to be examined.
Photographs taken at the hospital and displayed for the jury appeared to show a scrape on the woman’s face, marks on her neck, a bite mark near a breast and marks on her knees.
The woman got emotional when prosecutors opened evidence bags revealing the clothes she wore when she said she was attacked. She also said she never heard from Kettering police after 2009 until 2017 when a detective called.
She testified that when the officer said a DNA hit showed up on her case, she was stunned. “It was pretty awesome.” She said the detective texted her a picture of a gray pickup and she recalled the metal rack.
When cross examined by Mullins’ defense attorney Carl Goraleski about the specifics of how she was dragged into the pickup and how she recalled the vehicle, the woman said, “I remember being raped in that truck.”
The trial is expected to conclude later this week. Contact this reporter at 937225-6951 or email Mark. Gokavi@coxinc.com.