A Vancouver man recently arrested in connection with two sexual assaults in Hazel Dell had been accused previously of preying on women.
Dshawn D. Carr, 21, was acquitted by a Clark County jury Dec. 17 in connection with one allegation. Prior to that, he served a 38-month prison sentence for attacking a female real estate agent at knifepoint.
On May 6, 2007, when he was 17, Carr went to a model home in the 6200 block of Northeast 84th Avenue. After telling the real estate agent he was interested in buying a home for his mother, he filled out paperwork.
He then grabbed the agent, threw her to the ground, and held a knife to her throat. She struggled, kicked him repeatedly and managed to escape, according to court documents. A sheriff’s deputy arrested Carr down the street a short time later.
Carr pleaded guilty in November 2008 to second-degree assault and first-degree burglary.
He was arrested again last Aug. 30 after a woman alleged that he followed her from the Plaid Pantry store at Fourth Plain Boulevard and Kauffman Avenue and grabbed her, dragging her across a field. A passer-by intervened and the woman escaped, according to court papers.
At trial in December, Clay Spencer, Carr’s defense attorney, successfully showed how the passer-by was not credible and how there was a lack of physical evidence of an attack. He also pointed out that the woman had not reported the incident as a rape attempt when she called 911.
“Our theory of the case was that this was never a physical assault,” Spencer recalled Thursday.
Spencer said his client didn’t dispute interacting with the woman that night, but maintained that he had met her at the Plaid Pantry and then she had confronted him outside the store, asking if he sold drugs. He admitted knocking her to the ground during an altercation.
“It was a pretty far leap to make it to a sexual motivation allegation,” Spencer said.
The reason the passer-by wasn’t credible, Spencer said, was because he changed his account of the assailant’s physical description, initially saying he was black and later saying he was white. Then, when the witness testified at the trial, he said Carr wasn’t the attacker.
Following a two-day trial, jurors took less than two hours to acquit Carr of first-degree kidnapping and first-degree attempted rape, Spencer said.
The newest allegations against Carr began at 10:30 p.m. Jan. 30. An employee of the Hazel Dell Walmart store said she had left work and was walking along Northeast Highway 99 on her way home. She said she walked by a group of men she didn’t know and waved to be polite. One of them followed her, asking if she wanted to come to a party.
After she declined, the man — whom she later identified as Carr — displayed a knife and ushered her to a nearby used car lot. He told her to lie down on the ground, where he raped her, according to the criminal affidavit.
At 6:15 p.m. Feb. 2, an assailant attacked a 50-year-old woman in the parking lot of Winco Foods on Northeast Highway 99. She said he grabbed her by the hair as she was loading groceries and pushed her down into the car. A struggle ensued and she was able to bite the man’s hand.
A witness who had seen the man follow the victim out of the store confronted the assailant.
“She said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’” according to a court affidavit. “He backed out of the car and ran.”
Sheriff’s deputies arrested Carr in the area soon after, according to court documents. He had a fresh bite injury on his thumb. After taking him into custody, deputies connected him to the earlier rape after the victim identified him in a photo montage.
Carr is being held in jail on $1 million bail. He will be arraigned on charges of suspicion of first-degree rape and kidnapping Feb. 16.
