A Hickory man was found guilty last week of breaking into the home of a Street woman for whom he had done some work and raping her.
After four-and-a-half hours of deliberations Friday, a Harford County jury found Wardell Monroe Brooks, 54, of the 2100 block of Kalmia Road, guilty of first-degree rape based on the threat of strangulation/suffocation, second-degree rape, second-degree assault and false imprisonment. He was acquitted of two other first-degree rape charges, first-degree assault and burglary charges.
“I am very pleased about the verdict. The victim was very pleased,” Assistant State’s Attorney Vernon Gentile, who prosecuted the case, said Tuesday.
Sentencing likely will be scheduled for April, after a pre-sentence investigation.
The nurse who conducted a rape examination of the victim said the victim’s injuries were “very profound” and indicated she had been raped.
The woman told police she was sleeping on her couch Oct. 9, 2008, and when she woke up a man she knew as “Woody” was standing in front of her with his pants around his ankles.
The woman told police she tried to fight Brooks at first, hitting him over the head with a statue near her bedroom door. But Brooks knocked her to the ground and hit her in the head with broken pieces of the statue. Fearing for her life, the woman said, she complied with Brooks’ orders and he raped her.
During his testimony, Brooks said he stopped by the woman’s house the night of Oct. 9, 2008, to ask her for a ride home; he had walked to her house from Harvey’s bar.
Brooks had done work around the woman’s house before, and when he was there Oct. 9, he asked if she had more, he testified.
She said yes, he could clean the windows, but she didn’t have the money at the time. He suggested they have sex in exchange for him washing the windows, which he said the woman agreed to, he said.
After they were done, he was putting on his shoes, he testified, and said he wouldn’t be able to come back tomorrow. The next thing he knew, a ceramic statue was flying at him.
After that, he testified, he didn’t remember anything.