A Gwinnett County man has been convicted of sexually assaulting a woman at gunpoint after she repeatedly rejected his "relentless" romantic advances.
Gary Lewis Keys, 51, was sentenced to life in prison for two charges of aggravated sodomy. The guilty verdict was delivered on Sept. 22, after a five-day trial.
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Keys and the victim met and became friends in 2012. Keys “began to fixate” on the victim and began pursuing her romantically, according to the Gwinnett County District Attorney’s Office. The victim repeatedly turned him down.
On May 5, 2015, Keys showed up at the victim's home with a gun and sexually assaulted her. Police found "hundreds of outrageously graphic text messages" that Keys had sent to the victim in the months leading up to the assault, according to the DA's office.
“You had concluded that you were somehow entitled to take something that would not be given willingly, and you did so at the end of a gun,” said Judge George F. Hutchinson III during Keys’ sentencing.
The victim thanked the jury for believing her after the guilty verdict was returned.
“I didn’t just do this for me,” she said in a statement read by Assistant District Attorney Courtney Spicer. “I did this for my mother who was a rape victim, and for all of the women out there who didn’t or couldn’t tell.”
