Antonio White had previously been convicted of rape, robbery and previously pleaded guilty to sexual battery.
A Georgia man has been sentenced to life in prison for raping a woman, who recognized her attacker while riding the train six years after he assaulted her at gunpoint, officials said.
On the night of Aug. 12, 2007, the victim was walking to the Hamilton E. Holmes station of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) in Atlanta when an acquaintance drove up beside her, asking if she wanted a ride, the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office said.
The woman knew the man from the former Carver Homes neighborhood, where they both previously lived, so she accepted his offer.
But instead of driving her to where she needed to go, the man took her to an abandoned house on Bowen Avenue, the DA’s office said.
There, the woman realized she couldn’t get out of the man’s Chevrolet Lumina because the handle and button controlling the window were missing, but she managed to slip out of the car when the man opened his door, authorities said.
Armed with a gun, the man chased after her and pulled her hair from behind, dragging her back into the car, where he raped her, the DA’s office said.
“Shut up that screaming (expletive) or I’ll kill you,” the man warned the woman.
Over the years, the woman told family, friends and neighbors what had happened to her, but she never reported the crime to police, as those closest to her convinced her nothing would ever come of the case since she did not know the man’s real name, the DA’s office said.
But on Oct. 13, 2013, as the woman waited for a train at the Five Points MARTA station, she found herself face to face with her rapist.
“She was overcome by the moment and began to yell out that he was the man who had raped her six years earlier,” the DA’s office said. “Hearing her cries for help, MARTA police arrested [him] and turned him over to Atlanta police.”
The man was identified as Antonio White, now 54, who investigators quickly learned had sexually assaulted several other women in the Carver Homes/Lakewood area between 1983 and 2008, the DA’s office said.
During White’s trial, prosecutors presented evidence of four previous sexual assaults committed for which he was responsible, noting he often approached women on foot and assaulted them in wooded areas.
White was convicted of rape and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, officials announced Monday.
Authorities said White had previously been convicted of rape, robbery and previously pleaded guilty to sexual battery.
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