CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In a Charlotte courtroom Wednesday, the man accused of a violent attack questioned the alleged victim.
She was back on the stand answering questions for three hours Wednesday morning from prosecutors and Derek Smith, the man accused of attacking her.
The prosecutor asked her if she thought she was going to die.
“I still thought there was a very good possibility,” she responded.
The accuser in the rape trial against Smith became emotional several times when recounting what happened inside her south Charlotte apartment in 2014. Smith is accused of breaking into her apartment, waiting hours until she came home, threatening her with a knife, then raping her several times before leaving in her car.
Smith cross-examined her Wednesday because he is acting as his own attorney. The judge told him several times he could not argue with the witness or make statements. He could only question her.
Smith never denied being in the woman’s apartment but he tried to dispute some of her account of the sexual assault.
“Is it true you said each of those statements?” Smith asked.
“Based on documents in front of me, I said I had been physically assaulted,” she said.
The accuser became emotional again when hearing the 911 call she made almost two years ago. In the call, you can hear the dispatcher ask her, “You said he assaulted you, is that right?” The woman replies, “Uh-huh, he made me take my clothes off.”
In the 911 call, the accuser tells the dispatcher the suspect left in her car.
A Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer testified while showing dashcam video of a chase that started, he says, after he and other officers tried to pull the woman’s vehicle over when they spotted it.
The jury could hear officers tell the man several times, “Get out of the car with your hands up now!”
The officer testifying said police eventually broke the driver’s side window to get the suspect out. Once they searched him, an officer testified they found the accuser’s bank cards in Smith’s pocket.
Prosecutors called a CMPD crime scene technician to the stand. During cross-examination, Smith asked if she found a knife. She said no but later said if a knife had been in the car, a detective would have collected it.
The trial resumes 9 a.m. Thursday.
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