Trial: Cal Poly student describes ‘living hell’ since being attacked in her apartment
A 23-year-old Cal Poly student broke down in tears several times as she testified against an Atascadero man she says sneaked into her apartment, bound her hands and mouth with tape, and nearly raped her before being scared off.
“I can’t forget it,” the woman — who The Tribune is not identifying — told jurors in San Luis Obispo Superior Court on the first day of testimony in the trial of Tyrone Anderson. “It was terrifying.”
Anderson was arrested in Atascadero in May 2018 after he allegedly crashed into the vehicle of another woman, a former co-worker with whom he had shared a brief consensual sexual encounter a year prior, and allegedly attacked her and tried to shove her inside his vehicle.
A Good Samaritan who witnessed the incident came to the woman’s aid, police said then, causing Anderson to flee alone in the vehicle following a scuffle in which Anderson allegedly pulled a knife.
After he returned to the scene of the crash and was arrested, police announced Anderson had been tied by alleged DNA evidence to the reported attack of the Cal Poly student, inside her Foothill Boulevard apartment five months prior.
In her opening statement on March 2, chief deputy district attorney Lisa Muscari described Anderson to the jury as someone who “needs dominance and control over women,” whether the victim is known to him or is a stranger in her own home.
But Anderson’s attorney, Patrick Fisher, told the jury last week that Anderson had nothing to do with the alleged attack on the Cal Poly student — arguing that the woman is a “scammer” who made up the incident to avoid a final exam the next day, among other alleged motivations.
Fisher also argued that the later incident in Atascadero was the result of a misunderstanding by witnesses after the alleged victim in that event actually attacked Anderson following the accidental vehicle collision.
Anderson has pleaded not guilty to six felony charges: assault with intent to commit rape, kidnapping to commit robbery or rape, sexual battery, assault with intent to commit great bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon and first-degree burglary.
If convicted of the most serious charges against him, Anderson, 39, faces the possibility of life in state prison.
Alleged assault victim felt ‘powerless’
On March 3, the jury heard from the Cal Poly student about the alleged attack at her Foothill Boulevard apartment.
She recalled how she was at home with her caged emotional support dog on Dec. 4, 2017, while her roommate was out.
After making dinner and taking a shower, the woman said, she was about to get dressed in her bedroom when she heard what sounded like electricity sparking and saw a flash of light in the living room.
Thinking a fire was breaking out, she ran naked into the living room to instead see a man wearing black gloves standing there, she testified.
She said the man quickly grabbed her from behind with one hand on her throat and the other around her mouth. He led her into her roommate’s bedroom, where he wrapped her wrists and ankles in duct-tape, she testified.
“It was terrifying, because you’re powerless in that position,” she said. “I did everything and anything I could to make sure he wasn’t going to, like, kill me.”
The woman said she didn’t turn around and get a good look at her attacker because she was afraid. Asked by Muscari what she believed the man wanted, the woman replied, “To rape me.”
The woman said her attacker applied lube on her naked genital region and replied: “You know what I want.”
At this point, the woman began hyperventilating and “freaking out,” she said, and the next thing she knew, she heard her front door open and close.
After flipping herself upright, the woman hopped to the front door to lock it, removed the tape from her mouth using saliva and called 911 using the Siri voice application on her phone.
When shown photographs of the duct tape cut off her wrists by a responding officer, the woman broke down in tears on the stand and said she couldn’t look at them. Superior Court Judge Craig van Rooyen called a 15-minute recess to allow the witness to compose herself.
When she resumed, the alleged victim testified about how the attack continues to affect her daily life and has had long-lasting effects on her anxiety and depression.
“To this day, I can’t shower with the shower curtain closed because I’m afraid someone’s going to be standing there,” she said. “It’s been hell — a living hell.”
Jurors also heard the 911 call the woman made, in which she can be heard telling the dispatcher to hurry in case her attacker returns.
When officers arrive, the woman is heard yelling, “Get it off! Get it off!” as she struggles to remove the duct tape from her wrists.
Defense calls accuser a ‘liar’
Under cross examination by Fisher, the alleged victim admitted that she was supposed to begin testifying a day earlier, but that she left court because of a panic attack and did not return calls from the San Luis Obispo District Attorney’s Office for the remainder of the day.
Asked by Fisher whether she lies, the woman said yes, “as we all do.”
Fisher asked her about text messages to a friend in which the woman wrote that “scamming men” was her “new favorite hobby.” The woman said she was being “facetious.”
The woman also admitted in court to pulling a ruse with a man she met online — soliciting and receiving money that was supposed to pay for a tutor, but which she spent on a birthday trip to Las Vegas.
The woman also admitted on the stand to lying to a former boyfriend about being pregnant, having a miscarriage and then again being pregnant, in an effort to keep the boyfriend with her.
At this point, the woman became visibly angry with Fisher’s questioning, asking, “What does this have to do with what happened?” Van Rooyen on several occasions had to tell the witness to answer the question.
“This is humiliating and embarrassing ... And if (the attack) wasn’t true, we wouldn’t be here right now,” she said. “I don’t like being made out to be a liar.”
The alleged victim testified that she was released from taking her final exam at Cal Poly the day after the attack. Fisher had stated in his opening that the woman was on academic probation at the time of the attack and that she told the investigating detective that she would have lost her financial aid if she failed the exam.
But the woman countered that she couldn’t take the exam because she was distraught, and if not for the attack, she “would have graduated by now.”
Finally, Fisher asked the woman whether it was true she did not recognize Anderson’s photograph when shown it by investigators. The woman agreed, but said that she had looked at “hundreds” of photos offered by investigators.
DNA, fingerprint evidence in kidnapping case
On March 4, jurors heard testimony from several investigating officers in the case, including Shelby Liddell, a forensics specialist formerly with the San Luis Obispo Police Department, who dusted the alleged San Luis Obispo victim’s apartment for fingerprints.
Liddell testified that she developed fingerprint samples from the exterior of the woman’s apartment, including on an outside window sill, as well as a partial palm print found in the woman’s bedroom.
Those prints were run through an FBI database, but did not result in any positive match.
Liddell testified that she also sent off DNA samples taken from the alleged victim’s body for testing to the California Department of Justice’s forensic lab in Goleta.
Faced with initial doubts about how the woman was able to peel off duct tape over her mouth without the use of her hands, San Luis Obispo police Sgt. Chad Pfarr testified that his role in the investigation was to test whether that was possible.
After the alleged victim said she used her saliva and tongue to push the tape off her mouth, Pfarr attempted the same action in a controlled setting and was successful, he said.
“Our initial thought was, ‘How’d she get it off?’ ” Pfarr told Fisher under cross examination. “We wanted to see that it was possible.”
San Luis Obispo police Officer Adam Stanke, who was the first officer to arrive to the woman’s apartment and who cut off tape on the woman’s wrists, also agreed with Fisher’s statement that investigators were “puzzled” by how the woman got the tape off her mouth.
San Luis Obispo Det. Suzie Walsh testified that she photographed the San Luis Obispo woman’s body one day after the alleged attack.
Walsh said that the alleged victim’s wrists showed slight discoloration which did not appear visible in photographs she took, but which the detective said were visible in person and consistent with being bound with duct tape.
Walsh also told the jury that the inside of the woman’s apartment was visible through a window’s blinds and through a gap in the apartment complex’s exterior fencing.
The detective recounted the moment when the alleged victim remembered that she had accidentally left her front door unlocked after opening to air out burned food in the kitchen earlier in the evening.
“She said, ‘Oh my God, this is my fault,’ ” Walsh testified the woman said to her. “She felt terrible and felt like she was to blame for everything that happened after that because of her error.”
Second victim describes attempted kidnapping
On Monday morning, Anderson’s second alleged victim, an Atascadero woman with whom he worked at a discount store, took the stand.
The woman testified that she and Anderson worked together for approximately three months and had a brief sexual encounter at the time.
“He used to say things to me that made me feel well as a woman,” the Atascadero woman said through an interpreter. At the time, “he didn’t force me to do anything I didn’t want to do,” she said.
The woman testified that she and her boyfriend had hung out a couple times with Anderson and his then-girlfriend. But that friendship ended when Anderson left the job about seven month before the alleged attempted kidnapping in Atascadero in May 2018, the woman said.
The only contact between the two during that time was when Anderson inquired about buying her cell phone, which she was advertising for sale on Facebook. She testified that when she brought the phone to Anderson’s apartment — the two lived in the same complex — he was only interested in flirting.
The woman testified that she was stopped at an Atascadero stop sign on May 7, 2018, after dropping her children off at school when Anderson crashed his Mercedes into the rear of her car, causing slight damage.
When she got out of her vehicle, the woman said Anderson grabbed her by the throat and started dragging her to the back seat of his car.
“It was obvious he was going to rape me and kill me,” the woman testified. “I think he was obviously obsessed with me.”
The woman struggled with Anderson, striking him in the head with items he had in his back seat, she said.
“I was thinking about my children and what they would do without their mother,” she said, wiping away tears.
But a passerby came to the woman’s aid, pulling Anderson off of her, she said. The woman said that Anderson pulled a knife on the man and cut him.
Anderson suffered a serious cut to the back of his hand, in what Fisher called a “defensive wound.”
Testimony was scheduled to continue Wednesday.
Anderson remains in San Luis Obispo County Jail custody in lieu of $1.1 million bail.
This story was originally published March 11, 2020 at 1:25 PM.
