Six days after arriving in the United States, a 56-year-old Indian woman was kidnapped from a Shadyside street, raped, robbed and shoved out of the vehicle on a corner in Garfield, according to videotaped testimony played yesterday in court.
"I had no idea where I was. It was a very quiet place and there [were] no people around. It was a jungle," she said softly to a translator on the videotape. The woman left the country after giving the deposition.
Robert Hawkins Jr., 43, and Calvin Henderson, 58, a stepson and stepfather from Garfield, are on trial this week for the rape, robbery and abduction on June 19, 2005.
Testimony in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court on Monday focused, in part, on whether there were one or more individuals involved in the attack.
Draped in a pale blue Indian dress, the woman on the screen kept her head down -- weeping intermittently and thumbing the tissue clutched in her lap -- as she described the attack.
She was returning to her daughter's house from a walk when somebody hit her from behind in the head and then on her shoulders "and he had a knife in his hand," she testified. "I was trying to save myself, but I couldn't escape."
She was unable to see her attacker, who she said was driving the vehicle and hit her on the head each time she tried to lift it. She testified that she understood that he was asking her if she was Indian and demanding money.
"I gave him my bangles to appease him, to let me go away, but he took that and didn't let me go," she said.
Instead he stopped the car and raped her, she confirmed in response to Assistant District Attorney Janet Necessary's questions.
The prosecution rested after calling several police detectives, a former co-worker of Mr. Henderson's and a forensic serologist.
Mr. Henderson's attorney called only one witness, the defendant's sister, and Mr. Hawkins' attorney only had time yesterday to call one, his client's uncle. Both testified that the two defendants do not get along well.
The prosecution connected Mr. Hawkins to the crime through a witness who picked him out of a photo array.
The most powerful testimony came, however, from the serologist who tested DNA samples from the rape kit, from the vehicle police believe was involved and from the two defendants.
No DNA evidence tied Mr. Hawkins to the crime; however, DNA extracted from the seat cushion and the steering wheel matched Mr. Henderson's. Two separate DNA samples from the victim rape kit matched Mr. Henderson's genetic profile, a one in 15 sextillion likelihood.
"You are one quadrillion times more likely to win the Powerball jackpot," said Robert Askew, the serologist. "You are 7.6 times more likely to win the Powerball twice than to have this profile."
