Uber driver given 22-year term for raping passenger
Prosecutors asked judge for life in prison sentence.
WEST PALM BEACH — For more than five decades, Gary Kitchings led a life free of any criminal troubles.
In fact, friend Harold Davis told a judge during a sentencing hearing Wednesday that Kitchings and his wife had earned so much respect within their community of foster parents that their work convinced him and his wife to undertake the often heartbreaking, backbreaking work of providing a home for children from tough backgrounds.
The 38-year-old woman who accused Kitchings of raping her last year sat silently in a Palm Beach County courtroom as she heard Davis speak on his behalf.
Though Davis and others saw the Uber driver as a man who embodied the dream of a family for so many, the woman told Circuit Judge Krista Marx that Kitchings was now the face she sees in her nightmares.
“I have dreams that he comes back into the house to kill me, or to kill my dogs and me,” she said. “Just walking out of my building is difficult.”
For that reality, along with a jury’s convicting him in March on three counts of sexual battery and another charge of false imprisonment, the victim and prosecutors told Marx that the now 58-yearold Kitchings deserved a life in prison sentence.
Marx disagreed, giving Kitchings a 22-year sentence — four years less than even the minimum recommended 26-year sentence for the charges under state sentencing guidelines.
“My heart goes out to the victim in the case and the trauma she must be going through, but I am looking at the defendant’s lack of prior history and his contributions to the community in its totality,” Marx said, later adding: “I don’t