Woman testifies about prolonged attack in Gari Stewart trial

The 26-year-old woman maintained her composure for the most part as she testified Wednesday about how an intruder stabbed her boyfriend, raped her twice, set fire to her apartment and abducted her the morning of June 15, 2007.

She sobbed audibly, however, when prosecutors in the Gari L. Stewart trial showed her for the first time photos of a blood-soaked pillow and comforter on her bed where her gravely wounded boyfriend had lain unconscious. "I thought he was dead," she said during her testimony.

Stewart, 28, is on trial in Ramsey County District Court on charges of first- and second-degree attempted murder, first-degree criminal sexual assault, first-degree burglary, first-degree arson and kidnapping.

The woman said when spent "probably five hours" with the intruder/abductor. She is just 5 foot 2 and 100 pounds. She suffers from cystic fibrosis, a genetic and progressive lung disease, diabetes and underwent a liver transplant in 1999.

The intruder was armed with a kitchen knife from the woman's apartment. The woman said she believed he also had a gun. She didn't try to flee or escape because "I never felt like I could outrun this person," she testified.

Prosecutor Dawn Bakst guided the woman through the events of the previous evening and that morning:

The woman said she met her boyfriend soon after she moved into an adjacent apartment at 696 Grand Av. in St. Paul. She took banana bread to the apartment he shared with his older brother and they became friends, then boyfriend and girlfriend.

The evening of June 14, 2007, they watched a Twins game on television before heading to Billy's, a bar and restaurant about three blocks west of their apartments. They had a couple of drinks and returned home about midnight. The woman went to bed while the boyfriend stayed up to watch a movie in the living room, then went to bed himself.

The woman said she awoke to a rustling noise and turned to see a man with one hand over her boyfriend's mouth and the other holding a knife to his throat. The woman repeatedly referred to the intruder as "the person."

"[My boyfriend] touched my hand," she said. "He said, 'It's OK, I'll be OK.' I think he was trying to calm me down.

"I said, 'No, what's going on?' The person told me to turn around and go back to sleep."

The woman looked at her cell phone: It was 4 a.m. She said she thought about calling 911, but was "too scared."

The woman stayed in the bedroom as the intruder led the boyfriend from the kitchen to the bathroom and back to the bedroom. He tied the boyfriend's hands, wrapped him in a clear shower curtain and tried to shove him under the bed. The boyfriend was stabbed in the back, neck and chest after he briefly got the upper hand against the intruder. The woman's voice rose in fright as she described the assault on her boyfriend.

"I freaked out," she said. "I thought he was killing [my boyfriend]."

When the boyfriend lost consciousness, "I thought he was dead," she said.

The intruder proceeded to bring the woman into the living room, where he raped her at knifepoint. When he was done, he led her to the bathroom and forced her to shower with him and wash his body as well as his own.

Then he took her in the living room again, molested her and raped her again. Again he made her wash him. Back in the bedroom, the woman tried to go to her boyfriend but the intruder wouldn't allow it.

The person told her to pile all of her clothes on the bedroom floor. He poured several beers onto the pile, then found a bottle of white wine in the refrigerator. He drank some.

He poured that wine on the clothes pile and a bottle of red into her closet. He made the woman call her mother and tell her not to pick her up for work that day.

Before leaving the apartment with the woman, he lit the clothes, the closet, the couch and other items on fire. He knocked down the apartment's smoke detector and took the fire extinguisher from the hall. The woman told him about her cystic fibrosis and persuaded him to let her bring her medications with her in her purse.

Once outside, they walked first one way, then another down the alley behind the building. Their movements were caught on a video camera and the tape was played for jurors Wednesday. They eventually found an ATM at a BP gas station. The woman withdrew about $100, she said, and gave it to him. He bought a soda pop or himself and one for her.

He called a taxi then and had the driver take them to the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis. They went into the Applebee's restaurant on Washington Avenue SE., then the Radisson Hotel next door looking for another ATM. When they found one, the woman couldn't get anymore cash because she'd reached her limit.

Next the man wanted to find a TV to see a news report of the fire on Grand Avenue. The woman said she knew where there was one at the hospital across the street. She also knew there was a security guard on the third floor and tried to steer the man there.

But the security guard wasn't there. Video from the hospital shows the woman and the intruder were in the hospital about 45 minutes. The woman and her abductor got in another cab and headed to downtown Minneapolis, where he made her rent him a car from Avis. The woman said the man was "very polite" to everyone they met, but she knew he had a knife and possibly a gun and she was too afraid to scream or try to flee.

Finally, the woman said, she was able to convince him she was sick and needed to get to a hospital. The man dropped her back at the university hospital.

Another video with a time stamp of 8:12 a.m. shows the woman running to the reception desk, then toward the admissions desk.

"I told [them] my boyfriend's been stabbed and killed, I had been raped and I needed help," she said.

The woman said she remembers being brought to the emergency department, where she was examined by a nurse trained to work with sexual assault victims.

The nurse collected her clothing. On Wednesday, Bakst, the prosecutor, handed her several brown paper sacks stapled shut and asked her to open them.

The first contained a white tank top. "My mom gave it to me," the woman said.

The next was her white hooded sweater, then her black pants, her medications and her purse.

The woman said she remembered talking to a detective in the emergency room and to a physician. No one could tell her what had happened to her boyfriend. Finally she grabbed a cell phone and called Regions, the hospital she figured he had been taken to. She asked for his room and his mother answered.

"I started bawling and she said hang on a second and handed the phone to [my boyfriend]," the woman said.

"I said, 'I love you,' and I couldn't stop crying."

The woman identified Stewart as her attacker in a photo lineup the next day. She said in court Wednesday that she had "no doubt" that the man sitting next to his attorney was the same man.

The woman said she had told police that the man had a tattoo that said "Gangster" or "Gangsta." Bakst, the prosecutor, showed her a photo of Stewart's "Gangsta" tattoo. It was the first time the woman had seen the photo, she said.

Defense attorney John Riemer focused his cross-examination of the woman on inconsistencies between her testimony in court and to a grand jury. He also questioned whether the photos in the lineup police created for her to look at were of black men. The woman said she didn't remember.

Pat Pheifer • 612-741-4992