A 23-year-old North Little Rock man had consensual sex with two women in his neighborhood, but is not the masked rapist who attacked them, his lawyer told a judge Monday.
Devontai Lamar Peer did not testify during a bail hearing before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson.
Defense attorney Lou Marczuk told the judge that Peer had been intimate with the women in separate liaisons but was not involved in any attacks.
Johnson set bail at $160,000 for Peer. He's been jailed since surrendering to police on Christmas Eve after learning he was wanted by authorities. He is charged with aggravated assault, residential burglary, aggravated residential burglary, two counts of rape and four counts of first-degree terroristic threatening.
Deputy prosecutor Jayme Butts-Hall asked the judge for substantial bail, in part because of a remark Peer made to investigators that if he saw a woman that he was interested in, he could always get her.
She also cited similarities in the two attacks, one on Nov. 15 and the second on Dec. 6, reported by the women who live near the defendant and who were acquainted with him before they were attacked.
Both women were raped by a man who had his face covered. In both cases, children were in the house at the time of the assaults and they witnessed at least part of what happened, the prosecutor said.
The woman attacked in November reported that she'd been awakened in the middle of the night. The mother of two had been in bed with her toddlers and saw a ski-masked man in a dark hoodie holding a pistol with a very long barrel, detective Julie Eckert testified.
The masked assailant motioned for her to keep quiet and pulled her toward him, keeping the sheets over her face while he raped and sodomized her, the detective testified. At one point during the attack, she said she felt her son sit up, which prompted the rapist to grab the pistol and tell the little boy to go back to sleep.
Eckert said the assailant wiped himself off with one of her towels but took it with him. He left, taking $250 she had in the room, after warning the woman not to tell police or he would return and it would be "worser" for her, the detective testified.
A sexual-assault examination was performed that same day, but police did not have any leads until the second woman in the neighborhood reported being raped in December by an intruder who kept his face covered, Eckert said.
That woman told police she'd been awakened by a knock on her door.
When the woman opened the door, she found a man with his face covered by a scarf, who then pushed his way into her home. The detective said the assailant brandished a pink electric stun gun that he fired as he chased the woman.
The woman ran to her children's room, where she tried to shield them in their beds, but the attacker pulled her out of the room, Eckert said.
The man demanded the woman perform oral sex, the detective said. He made her clean up before he left but she was able to smear a portion of his bodily fluids on the bathroom sink while he wasn't looking, Eckert testified.
The woman never saw her attacker's face, but she thought his voice sounded like "Tay," a relative of her boyfriend, a man who had sexually propositioned her before.
The woman later heard that Peer's girlfriend owned a pink stun gun, the detective said.
Police got a search warrant and found a pink shock weapon at his home at 3020 Lincoln Ave., Eckert testified.
Testing on the genetic material found on the sink showed it to be DNA from Peer "within all scientific certainty," Eckert told the judge, describing the findings of the state Crime Laboratory.
Peer's DNA also matched material found during a medical examination of the woman who was attacked in November, the detective said.
Shown a photograph of Peer, the woman could not identify him as her attacker, but did recognize him as a man she had met when he had skateboarded by her home, Eckert said. He also had tattooed her arm, the detective said.
Peer agreed to an interview after his arrest, the detective said. He told Eckert that he's a "gun guy" who always keeps firearms, so the idea of him using a pink stun gun is "silly."
Peer also described the woman's tattoo in great detail, Eckert said. He said he once had been in a relationship with the December accuser.
He scoffed at the notion of having to force himself on women, Eckert said.
When Peer surrendered to police, he also was wanted for missing his December arraignment on a firearm charge stemming from his June 28 arrest in Sherwood, where police reported finding him with a Ruger pistol during a traffic stop. Peer is a felon and it is illegal for him to have a gun.
Metro on 04/12/2017