S. Side man held in rapes of girl, 7
The suspect used $1 to entice the child, police said.
STAFF REPORT
YOUNGSTOWN — Based on a 7-year-old South Side girl’s graphic descriptions of being raped, police arrested Shawn M. Thomas, 25.
Thomas, of Buckeye Circle, was arraigned Monday in municipal court on one count of kidnapping and two counts of rape.
Judge Robert P. Milich set bond at $1 million and a preliminary hearing for April 28.
The girl and her parents were interviewed by Patrolwoman Kelly Lamb at Akron Children’s Hospital, where the child was taken after a rape examination at St. Elizabeth Health Center. The officer’s report shows this sequence of events:
The girl went to sit on her porch between 8 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday and was discovered missing a few minutes later by her mother, and a search got under way. A family friend who came across the girl roughly 45 minutes later in a church parking lot brought her home.
The girl said she was going to a friend’s house a block away on Weston Avenue to play when a man named Shawn approached, handed her $1 and told her to go into the garage, saying he’d give her $10 the next day when he got paid. He partially undressed the girl and himself, the report says.
Thomas then told the child they were going for a walk and held her hand as he guided her to some woods, what he called his “safe spot,” near a park, the report says. She described how they crossed baseball fields, and police believe they walked to the nearby park at Buckeye Circle and Loveland Avenue, near Thomas’ house.
The girl said that, once in the woods, Thomas again undressed her and himself and raped her, police said. He then took her to the church parking lot, where she was found.
In her report, Lamb noted that the child was muddy all over and had scratches on her arms and legs, with redness on her upper arms where she said Thomas grabbed her. The girl described Thomas and the clothes he was wearing, explaining that she recognized him because he had been working on her friend’s roof on Weston, police said. She said he told her to not tell anyone what happened.
Police collected the $1 the girl said Thomas gave her.
After an investigation that included talking to Thomas’ parents, police talked to Thomas on his cell phone, but he declined to surrender.
A Weston Avenue woman, who later spoke to Thomas, agreed to meet him to loan him $20 and then alerted police to his whereabouts.
Thomas was seen hiding in a dog house on Weston Avenue. He ran from there toward Medford Avenue around 12:50 a.m. Sunday. Patrolman Josh Kelly and his dog, Hilo, and Patrolman Michael Anderson with his dog, Ninja, tracked Thomas to a house in the 1600 block of Medford.
After Thomas was booked into Mahoning County Jail, all his clothes and other belongings were collected as evidence.