Central Texas woman run off road, raped
June 30, 2006, 7:15AM
Central Texas woman run off road, raped
Associated Press
GROESBECK, Texas — A Central Texas woman was recuperating at a Temple hospital after she reported being run off a rural road, kidnapped and then raped and beaten by her abductors, authorities said.
The 18-year-old woman was in stable condition Thursday following surgery. She had walked and crawled a half-mile to find help after her abductors left her for dead along a highway early Wednesday morning, authorities said.
"She spent more than two hours in hell," Limestone County Sheriff Dennis Wilson said.
Wilson said Javier Guzman Martinez, 17, and Noel Darwin Hernandez, 22, both of Mexia, had been arrested for the crime and were charged Thursday with aggravated assault and aggravated kidnapping.
The suspects began following the woman late Tuesday night as she left Mexia, about 40 miles east of Waco, where she was visiting friends, authorities said. The suspects did not know the woman.
The woman told investigators she was driving at about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday on a state highway toward her home in a Limestone County town when a car rammed her sport utility vehicle and forced her off the road, Wilson said.
The woman told investigators that the men forced her into their car, and then drove around rural county roads while they sexually assaulted, stabbed and beat her, Wilson said.
The woman said the men left her about a mile south of Coolidge in a ditch, where she pretended to be dead until they left, Wilson said. She then found help at a nearby trailer.
Dena Lincoln said the woman, covered in blood, came to her trailer door at about 4:30 a.m.
"I will never, as long as I live, get that look that was on her face out of my mind," Lincoln said. "She kept saying, 'I'm going to die. I'm going to die.' I told her, 'No, honey, you are going to be all right. We are going to get you some help.'"
The woman was flown by helicopter to a Temple hospital with numerous cuts and stab wounds, including an injury that endangered one eye, Wilson said.
Wilson said investigators canvassed the area on Wednesday with the description of the suspects given by the women.
Officers found Martinez at his Mexia residence. Wilson said he confessed to the incident and told officers of Hernandez's involvement. U.S. Marshall's tracked Hernandez to a Waco bus station, where he was arrested Wednesday night.
Martinez was being held in the Limestone County Jail while Hernandez was to be transferred to Limestone County from McLennan County, officials said. Wilson said both men are apparently in the United States illegally and will be held without bond on immigration charges. Hernandez is from Honduras, and Martinez is from Mexico, Wilson said.
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