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Man on trial could get 50 years in prison for rape, kidnapping, aggravated robbery
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A 24-year-old city man on trial in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court could get more than 50 years in prison if convicted of rape, kidnapping and aggravated robbery.
Kevin T. Johns, of Fairmount Avenue Northeast, went on trial Monday before Judge Andrew Logan.
On Tuesday, one of two women he’s accused of kidnapping and robbing testified that Johns was wearing a mask when he first took them hostage and they drove up to a house on Woodbine Avenue Southeast.
But eventually he took off the mask, and he had several teardrop tattoos below his eyes and another tattoo in the center of his forehead, she said.
The woman said she was also able to identify Johns by finding his picture on Facebook two days after the offenses. She said she was “5,000 percent” sure that Johns is the man who kidnapped her at gunpoint and robbed her April 13, 2013.
The woman testified she and her best friend were riding in her car when the other woman’s friend, Taemarr Walker, told her by telephone to pick him up at the house on Woodbine. Walker, 24, of Warren, was killed in a confrontation with a police officer last October.
When they got to the house on Woodbine, the other woman got out of the car and attempted to knock on the door, but Johns appeared and said, “Where is ... Taemarr?” The other woman said she didn’t know.
“And then he pulled out a gun and said, ‘Get in the ... car.’”
They got back in the car, and Johns sat in the back seat, and they drove around. While driving, the other woman called Walker, who said to drive to a specific house, where he would meet them.
He never showed up, but while in the driveway, Johns ordered her out of the car and said to stand on the other side of a fence. She stood there a couple of minutes, then her friend told her to get back in the car. Johns took the phones belonging to both women, then got out of the car and fled, she testified.
That’s when the other woman told her, “He just raped me.”
“I was freaking out. I took her to the hospital,” the witness said, adding that her friend told her Johns wiped himself off with her hooded sweatshirt after the rape, so she took the sweatshirt into the hospital with her.
Johns’ attorney, Daniel Keating, questioned the woman about a Facebook post she wrote to the other woman in which she accused her of lying about being raped.
The witness said she and the other woman had a “falling out” over money after the incident, and she wrote those words just to be hateful.
“She had posted a bunch of stuff about me, so I was mad at her,” the woman testified.
Testimony is expected to conclude today.