Crime & Safety

Man Convicted Of 'Horrifying' Sex Attack

The attack in Gwinnett County lasted five hours, with the attacker threatening to kill his 33-year-old victim multiple times.

LAWRENCEVILLE, GA — A Gwinnett County man was convicted Thursday in a sexual assault that a judge called "one of the most horrifying stories I've heard."

A jury convicted D'Andre Satcher, 24, on charges of rape, three counts of aggravated sodomy, burglary and false imprisonment in the May 16, 2015 attack on a 33-year-old woman in her Snellville home.

He was sentenced by Judge Robert Mock, Sr. to life without parole in prison, to be followed by three life sentences to be served consecutively.

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At about 3 a.m. that day, the victim was asleep when Satcher forced his way into her home. She woke up to noise on her back deck, then heard glass breaking in the front of the house. She yelled out for the person to take whatever they wanted and leave, then locked her bedroom door, called 911 and hid in a walk-in closet.


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Satcher ran upstairs, broke through her locked bedroom door and pushed his way into the closet.

At trial, the jury heard a recording of the 911 call, on which the victim can be heard saying, "Please, sir, don’t do this. Please, sir, don’t do this to me."

Then, the phone was hung up. The 911 operator tried to find an address for the caller by triangulating the phone signal, but wasn't able to get an exact location. Gwinnett County Police officers were sent to the general area, where they looked for any signs of disturbance but couldn't find the victim.

The woman testified that Satcher hung up the phone, then began sexually assaulting her. He raped her repeatedly and sexually attacked her in other ways over the course of five hours.

At one point, Satcher pulled her down to lie next to him on the floor, forcing her to cuddle with him and asking her details about her life. He told her that he'd been watching her and that he'd been wanting to do this for some time.

During those five hours, he made multiple threats to the woman's life, saying repeatedly that he was going to have to kill her. She remained calm and told him he didn't have to do that and that she wasn't going to tell anyone what happened.

She finally convinced him to leave, but before he did, he told the victim that if she called police, he would come back and kill her. Regardless, the victim immediately called police, but officers weren't able to identify a suspect at the time.

Eighteen days after the rape, on June 3, 2015, the victim's father went to her house, where she was no longer living, to meet with an alarm company. He was approached by a man who claimed to be a friend of the daughter's rapist who'd been sent to "take care of business."

The father was held with a knife to his throat inside a bathroom until he convinced the man to leave.

The following day, Gwinnett police were able to match a fingerprint left at the scene of the original assault. The print belonged to Satcher, who lived across the street from the victim.

Police executed a search warrant on Satcher's home and found a shirt belonging to the victim, a pair of gloves with the father's blood on them and a note instructing the victim to call a detective and say that her story was false.

Police took samples of Satcher's DNA, which matched blood found on the victim's broken window and in the closet where the rape happened and other physical evidence. When interviewed by police, Satcher claimed he'd never met the victim and had never been to her house.

At trial, his attorneys argued that the woman had consented to the sex acts. After a four-day trial, the jury deliberated for one hour and 15 minutes before returning their verdicts.

Satcher was acquitted on charges of aggravated sexual battery, obstructing or hindering persons making emergency telephone calls, burglary and aggravated assault.

Before sentencing, Mock called the case "one of the most horrifying stories I've heard in all my years as a judge."

Photo via Shutterstock

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