Testimony began Tuesday in the fourth rape trial in Richmond County Superior Court for Darrell Oliver, 37.
Oliver has pleaded not guilty to rape and burglary in connection with what happened to a mother of three on the Saturday night after Thanksgiving, Nov. 27, 2021.
What happened that night was that a stranger peeping in windows at the Villa Marie apartments on Deans Bridge Road found one open. The man, dressed in a black hoodie and pants and white canvas shoes, crawled through the window and raped the woman as her 11-year-old daughter frantically called 911, Assistant District Attorney Justin Mullis told the jury in an opening statement.
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Neither the victim nor her daughter knew who the man was and neither got a good enough look at his face to be able to identify him. But prints on the outside of the window were matched to Oliver’s prints by the next day, Mullis said.
It wasn’t the first time Oliver has been charged with rape, but three different Richmond County Superior Court juries acquitted him of all charges in January 2019, January 2020 and September 2020. Each time DNA linked Oliver to the sexual assaults, Oliver claimed the sex was consensual. In one case, he initially denied having had sex with the woman, saying his cousin must have saved his semen and poured it into the victim, according to earlier media reports.
The man who raped the mother at home alone with her children on Nov. 27 was wearing a condom, the victim testified Tuesday.
“I was saying “No. No. Don’t hurt my kids,” she testified. She hadn’t seen the man come into the house and didn’t know if there was someone else with him.
“I was just praying … that nobody was with my kids in the other part of the apartment.”
The victim daughter, now 12, testified that she was headed to bed that night when she saw a man in her room. He shushed her and went to her mother’s room. She grabbed her cell when the man shut the door of her mother’s room and she heard the lock click.
She heard her mother’s screaming, she said. She called 911.
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Teddy Fontanez lives in the apartment complex with his wife and children. He saw a man leaving in a white car. It passed a Richmond County Sheriff’s patrol car entering the complex, he testified.
The security video from the apartment complex showed a man dressed in black clothing and white shoes climb through a window and then climb out a short time later. The video also captured a man arriving and later leaving the complex in a white car.
Richmond County sheriff investigators found on Oliver’s Facebook page picture of Oliver’s new white car he bought five days earlier. Oliver also noted he had been in Augusta that Saturday night of the attack. He had been living in Columbus, Ga., back in November.
Defense attorney Jennifer Cross told the jury in her opening statement that the evidence does not tie the case with a bow on top. There are numerous red flags, such as no DNA. Neither the victim nor her daughter told sheriff officers that the man who came into the apartment had a row of gold teeth as Oliver does, Cross said. There will also be reason to doubt the credibility of the fingerprint identification, she said.
Sandy Hodson is a staff reporter covering courts for The Augusta Press. Reach her at sandy@theaugustapress.com.
