Police are crediting a Marietta woman with tracking down the 16-year-old who allegedly raped her in the bedroom of her Franklin Road apartment early Thursday morning.
Marietta police spokesman David Baldwin said the suspect broke into the victim's home in the Cinnamon Ridge Apartments around 5 a.m. Thursday and attacked the victim while she was in bed.
"The suspect used an unknown instrument to threaten the victim and then proceeded to sexually assault her," Baldwin said.
In an interview, the victim told Channel 2 Action News, "My first instinct was to fight back and I did." (Channel 2 and the AJC do not identify victims of sexual assault.)
When the assailant put a sharp object against her, she said, “I felt like I had to surrender and beg for my life and ask him not to hurt me and hope that I would still be alive afterwards.”
After the attacker raped her and left, the woman called 911. Still, she added, “I was just determined to find him.”
Hours later, she left her apartment -- and spotted the suspect on Franklin Road.
“My heart started beating fast because I knew in my heart” that he was her attacker, she said, “so I just followed him.”
She called police, who responded and arrested the suspect.
“It was really devastating to find out he was only 16,” the woman said. “I was just thinking, could you imagine how his behavior could have progressed at the age of 21?”
Baldwin said the teen, whose name has not been released, was taken into custody Thursday and charged with burglary, aggravated assault, aggravated sodomy and rape. He is being held without bond in the Cobb Youth Detention Center.
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