By Steve Pardo
The Detroit News
DETROIT — A 40-year-old woman broke down on the witness stand Wednesday as she testified how a gunman entered a bedroom and sexually assaulted her while her two kids slept in the same bed 14 years ago.
The woman said she was sleeping around 3:45 a.m. Feb. 17 when the man entered the one-bedroom apartment she shared with her sister and children, a baby and a 6-year-old.
She felt a weight against her and a gun. The man then covered her eyes. “He proceeded to rape me,” the woman testified. “I was praying in his ear, ‘Please don’t kill me or my children.’”
The woman called police, went to the hospital and underwent forensic tests. The swabs and evidence were placed in a rape kit, labeled and sealed. She heard nothing from police until February.
On Wednesday, 38-year-old Antonio Jackson was ordered to stand trial on charges of home invasion and first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Prosecutors said his DNA was in the rape kit - one of the 10,500 such kits found by State Police during a 2010 audit of a Detroit crime laboratory that closed two years earlier.
It’s the first prosecution stemming from the finding of the forgotten rape kits. Prosecutors hope it’s one of many.
The scandal of the forgotten rape kits in the shuttered crime lab made national news, but helped bring together everyone from police to professors to process the kits.
A $200,000 federal grant led to “Project 400,” involving Michigan State researchers who randomly selected 400 of the kits for processing en route to getting all the viable kits tested. Jackson’s DNA was in one of the 400 tested, prosecutors said.
Jackson’s DNA was on file from a 2005 breaking-and-entering conviction. He also has charges of home invasion, possession of burglary tools and receiving and concealing stolen goods.
The alleged victim testified she was told to “shut up” during the assault. The ordeal lasted five or six minutes, she said.
“The victim still clearly carries the scars of her assault,” Assistant Prosecutor Danielle Hagaman-Clark said.
Jackson remains in the Wayne County Jail in lieu of a $50,000 bond. Judge Willie Lipscomb Jr. of the 36th District Court agreed to reduce the bond from $150,000, saying “It takes money to run” and didn’t believe Jackson would flee.
If Jackson makes bond, he would be forced to wear a tether. He faces a Dec. 21 date in Wayne County Circuit Court.
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