The woman looked at Sylvester Ray Tuesday when asked whether she could identify her rapist.
Ray, 40, sitting in a DeKalb County courtroom, is heavier than the man she described meeting in a bar nine years ago; he has a crew cut rather the Afro she remembered. But the weeping woman, her voice cracking, still appeared afraid when she became the first victim to testify against him in a trial in which he is accused of raping four women.
Asked to point out her rapist, she recoiled as she turned sideways in the witness box to look at Ray.
"It's him," she said.
She dabbed her eyes with a tissue brought by a bailiff.
She has moved to Virginia. Asked why she returned after several years to testify and relive the trauma, the 38-year-old woman said, "I've moved on with my life. But I don't want it to happen to anyone else."
Ray was indicted on charges of raping four DeKalb County women in 2002 and 2003 after authorities said DNA linked him to the cases. But Tuesday District Attorney Robert James was only telling the jurors about three of the victims. In the latest wrinkle in the case, one of the victims has quit cooperating with authorities.
James declined to comment about why the victim isn't cooperating. If the woman doesn't testify, defense lawyers Juwayn Haddad and Scott DePlonty said they will ask Superior Court Judge Linda Hunter to direct a verdict of acquittal in her case.
The first victim who testified Tuesday said she had met Ray -- who she said called himself "Sean" -- at a sports bar where he was chatting with some of her friends. She said she had a little too much too drink and he offered her a ride home. Instead, she said, he drove to a carport outside a house that he said belonged to a relative.
There, she said, he choked her, threatened to kill her and then raped her in the car.
"There was nothing I could do; he was bigger than me and I was unable to breathe," she said. "He kept choking me until he did his business. I kept praying."
She said she fled when he got out of the car to relieve himself and she heard gunshots behind her. A police officer picked her up on the road and took her to the hospital.
The case has lingered for nearly a decade largely because DeKalb police missed a critical lead back in 2002. A victim had memorized the tag number of the car driven by her attacker but detectives apparently didn't thoroughly investigate it. In 2010, Lt. J.C. Popp reopened the investigation, reviewed the incident reports, saw the tag number and quickly zeroed in on Ray.
James told jurors that the GBI had actually linked the otherwise seemingly unrelated rapes in 2005 but DeKalb police for some reason made no progress until 2010. By that that time much of the evidence -- including two rape kits -- was missing from the police evidence room as well as detective notes and medical notes from the first days of the investigations.
The trial resumes Wednesday in DeKalb County Superior Court.
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