Woman beaten at gunpoint leads deputies to her attacker
NORTH LAUDERDALE A woman who fought off an attempted sexual assault at gunpoint later led deputies to her attacker, the Broward Sheriff ’s Office said.
Rashard Markeith Moody, 30, of North Lauderdale, is facing charges that include attempted sexual assault with a weapon and false imprisonment, arrest records show.
According to the arrest report, he walked up to the woman early Monday as she sat in her car parked in the 7600 block of Tam O Shanter Boulevard in North Lauderdale.
Moody pointed a gun at her head and said, “If you comply I won’t hurt you,” and then he ordered her to get in the back seat and take her pants off, which she did, the arrest report said.
He got in the back seat, undid his belt, put the gun on his lap and pulled out a condom. When he used both hands to open the condom packet, the gun.
There was a struggle and Moody punched the woman in the head a couple of times, the report said. She managed to jump out of her car and run away.
When Moody ran off, the woman returned to her car, called 911 and tried to follow him.
She lost sight of Moody in an apartment complex parking lot, but then noticed a silver-gray 2007 Nissan Altima parked in an odd way near a trash dumpster. When the Nissan drove away, the woman followed it to a dead-end street and told 911 dispatchers where she was.
Detectives found the Nissan, which was registered to Moody’s girlfriend. He was arrested later that day.
Meanwhile, investigators received a phone call from someone who found a silver handgun wrapped in a black hoodie jacket discarded she grabbed on their front lawn on Southwest 74th Avenue, close to where the Nissan was found. It matched the victim’s description of the gun used in the attack, officials said.
Detectives said they also recovered a torn condom wrapper in the back seat of the woman’s car.
Further investigation showed that Moody was a convicted felon in possession of a firearm; that he was arrested for an armed robbery in Palm Beach County last year; and that he was wanted in Martin County for driving with a suspended license, officials said.
During questioning, Moody denied attacking the woman, but she identified him from a series of photographs, the arrest report said.
At his first appearance in court Tuesday, Moody was ordered held in the Broward County Jail without bond.
On average, the fourth named storm appears on Aug. 24.
So there’s still time for the season to catch up to the historically average pace of cyclone formation.
So far Hurricane Barry has been the most notable storm of 2019, making landfall on Intracoastal City, La., on July 13 as a Category 1 hurricane. According to AccuWeather it was just the fourth hurricane to strike Louisiana in July.
After Barry, Tropical Depression Three, which stayed in the ocean and traveled northeast off Florida’s east coast toward the Carolinas, was a two-day weather event from July 22 to July 23, bringing some rain to Florida and the Bahamas.
Chantal was still surviving on Wednesday afternoon but was expected to be downgraded to a depression soon, forecasters noted.
But another disturbance over the Bahamas was also being monitored on Wednesday. It was early yet but AccuWeather.com reported there was “some indication that disturbance may evolve into a tropical system somewhere from Florida waters to the Carolina coast” between Sunday and Friday.
But hurricane experts wisely try to hammer the same point home every year: It doesn’t matter how quiet a season has been because it only takes one storm to transform an uneventful hurricane season into a once-in-a-generation catastrophe — the most obvious example being 1992’s Hurricane Andrew.
“Do not get lulled into a false sense of security,” Feltgen said. “There’s a lot of season left. We have now entered the peak of the season, which runs through late October.”