Teen victim helps catch serial rapist
A 16-year-old rape victim managed to get the license plate number of the car in which she was abducted from a Mifflin Township street last fall.
Her quick thinking not only led investigators to her attacker, but to charge him with four rapes over a three-week period.
Kaquawn Lane, 25, faces as many as 95 years in prison after pleading guilty Monday to four counts of rape, four counts of kidnapping and two gun specifications. He is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 4 by Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Stephen L. McIntosh.
Lane, formerly of Jessica Way in Gahanna, forced the teenage girl into his car at gunpoint while she was walking in the 2200 block of Innis Road toward a bus stop on Cleveland Avenue about 7 a. m. Oct. 22, 2016.
He drove the girl to an unknown location, raped her and stole her iPhone and $40, then drove her back to the area where she had been abducted, Assistant Prosecutor Kacey Chappelear said.
“He threatened her and threatened her family before he pushed her out of the
car,” Chappelear said.
After sheriff’s deputies used the license plate number to track down Lane, his DNA was entered into a computer database, where it matched evidence taken from the teenager as well as victims in three other rape cases.
All of the victims identified Lane in photo arrays, Chappelear said.
Chappelear offered the following summary of the other attacks:
On Sept. 30, 2016, a woman told Columbus police that a man took her purse from her at the corner of Hague and Sullivant avenues on the West Side and refused to return it unless she got in his car. She said he drove her to the area of East 17th and Joyce avenues on the Northeast Side and raped her before she fled the vehicle.
On the same day, Lane met a woman at an East Side house and lured her into his car by asking her to help find his cigarettes, then drove a block away and raped her.
On Oct. 9, 2016, a woman visiting from Minnesota was in the front passenger seat of a car that her boyfriend had left running while he went to see someone at an apartment in the Easton area. Lane got into the driver’s seat, pointed a gun at the woman and drove off. He forced her to withdraw money from an ATM before raping her at an unidentified motel, then drove her to Parker Knoll Lane on the Northeast Side and abandoned the car.
Lane pleaded guilty to one kidnapping count for each incident and two counts of rape each for the teenage victim and the Minnesota woman.
None of the victims attended the plea hearing, but Chappelear said at least one is expected to appear at the sentencing.