Three sentenced in assault on Columbus woman who was raped, shot after rap party
The three men convicted last week on most of the charges related to the horrific 2014 assault on a Columbus woman who was kidnapped, raped, sodomized with handguns, shot and set afire will spend the rest of their lives in prison.
These are the sentences Judge Arthur Smith III gave the three Wednesday afternoon:
Ketorie Dtriston Glover, 27, was sentenced to life without parole plus five consecutive life sentences and 65 years in prison. The jury convicted him on two counts each of aggravated assault, aggravated sodomy and aggravated sexual battery, and one count each of rape, aggravated battery, kidnapping, hijacking a motor vehicle, second-degree arson, using a firearm to commit a felony.
Robert Carl Johnson, 27, also was sentenced to life without parole plus five consecutive life sentences and 65 years in prison. He also was convicted on two counts each of aggravated assault, aggravated sodomy and aggravated sexual battery, and one count each of rape, aggravated battery, kidnapping, hijacking a motor vehicle, second-degree arson, using a firearm to commit a felony.
Joey Bertrail Garron, 32, was sentenced to life without parole plus three consecutive life sentences and 60 years in prison. The jury convicted him on two counts each of aggravated assault and aggravated sodomy, and one count each of rape, aggravated battery, kidnapping, hijacking a motor vehicle and second-degree arson.
“It was just a long time coming,” the victim told the court before the sentencing, adding she was “speechless” in trying to describe her feelings and what she endured.
The defendants and their families should suffer as she and her family suffered, she said: “Let their kids go through what my kids went through.” That way they might feel the pain that she and all those around her felt, she said.
The lead investigator, police Lt. Lance Deaton, also spoke, saying he’d spent 16 years in law enforcement, 10 as a detective investigating violent crimes: “This has got to be one of the most, if not the most, brutal crimes that I have ever investigated,” he said, calling the defendants’ actions “just a complete disregard for human life.”
“The defendants are vicious and dangerous,” said Assistant District Attorney Sadhana Dailey, the lead prosecutor, recounting the victim’s testimony that the three “got excited from torturing her..... If there is a case that cries out for the maximum sentence, this is the case.”
The three defense attorneys also spoke, asking for less severe punishment.
Angela Dillon, who represented Johnson, said he has expressed remorse. She noted Johnson, while under Deaton’s questioning during the investigation, asked the detective to tell the other two suspects to tell the truth about what happened.
Garron’s attorney Anthony Johnson argued court precedent prohibited sentencing Garron to life without parole in a case in which no life was lost. Smith overruled him, saying the law since had changed.
Defense attorney Adam Deaver, who represented Glover, told the court his client passed him a note right before Deaver’s closing argument last week, writing, “I’m sorry. Please tell the court I’m sorry.”
“I felt like he was sincere,” the attorney added.
Dailey said after the sentencing that none of the three was remorseful:
“They were not sorry at all. They were sorry that they got caught. They thought they could fool a jury, and the jury saw right through them.... They are sorry now only at the end, that they were convicted.”
During court she had listed prior charges the defendants faced, according to their records:
Johnson at age 13 was convicted in juvenile court of child molestation for forcing an 8-year-old girl to give him oral sex in 2004, she said.
Garron was out on bond in 2014, having been charged with possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute it, she said.
Glover had a previous conviction for simple battery involving family violence, for throwing a fan at his wife and slapping her, Dailey said. He had juvenile convictions for simple battery, theft by receiving stolen property, second-degree criminal damage to property, and possessing cocaine, she added.
The trial
Jurors deliberated 2½ hours before delivering the verdict around 6:30 p.m. Friday, after Dailey in her closing argument reminded them of the victim’s testimony that the three relished sexually tormenting the 36-year-old woman during the brutal New Year’s Day attack in a vacant lot at 988 Farr Road.
“It was pure evil,” the prosecutor said, echoing the victim’s testimony that the men passed her around “like a piece of cake” while raping her, and were “really getting off” on sodomizing her both vaginally and anally at the same time with two guns, before they repeatedly shot her and then set her and her car afire.
Dailey also noted that during questioning by police, the suspects “had the nerve to claim the victim consented to what was done to her.”
According to the victim, this is how events unfolded that night:
She said she was sitting in her car listening to the radio outside a “party house” on Garden Drive, where guests were celebrating New Year’s Eve. That’s where Glover came over and offered to buy her a drink.
He went inside and brought her back a gin and juice, then sat in the front passenger seat, she said. Soon Glover’s friend Johnson joined them, getting in the back seat behind her, and then Garron got into the other back seat, she testified.
The woman said they all joined in a freestyle rap contest, during which her words apparently provoked the ensuing violence, prompting Glover and Johnson to put handguns to her head and say, “Drive, b---h!”
Soon after they left Garden Drive, they made her move to the front passenger seat so Glover could drive her 2007 Volkswagen Passat. He drove to an abandoned trailer park off Farr Road, where they ordered the woman to strip naked in the cold night air, forced her to give them oral sex, repeatedly sodomized her with handguns and raped her.
They put her in the trunk of the Passat, but she got out, so they shot her, poured gasoline on her and the car, and set the fuel alight.
After the victim rolled on the ground to extinguish the flames, they lined up like gunslingers in a Western movie, and backed away as Glover and Johnson fired at her repeatedly while she tried to find cover by the car.
She remained there on the ground, naked and crying for help, until witnesses in an adjacent trailer park heard her and called police shortly after 7 a.m. Paramedics called to the scene testified they arrived just in time to save her life, because a bullet wound to her chest had collapsed a lung and caused internal bleeding, and she could not breathe.
Besides that chest wound, she was left with first- and second-degree burns, an open fracture at the knee where she was shot, another fracture where she was shot in the hand, a gunshot wound to the abdomen that required removing part of her lower intestine, other gunshot wounds, and rips in her anus and vagina. She testified she still has three bullets lodged in her body.
Before sentencing the three Wednesday, Smith said the testimony had been horrifying.
“The testimony in this case was the most brutal that I’ve heard during my tenure as a Superior Court judge,” he said, adding that if not for the victim’s strength and perseverance, it would have been a murder case.
This story was originally published August 22, 2018 at 2:31 PM.