A 16-year-old girl was raped Sunday night and her attacker – whose criminal history spans more than 20 years – was shot to death as he walked down the road away from her Richburg home, Chester County authorities said.
Sometime between 9 and 10 p.m., deputies were called to the home to investigate a sexual assault.
A woman there told them that Michael Jermaine Terry, 39, of Lancaster had raped the girl and walked away, Sheriff Richard Smith said.
The girl called her mother, who was at work at the time, and told her about the assault, Smith said.
When deputies went down the road looking for Terry, they found him a half-mile away – lying in the road, covered in blood and not breathing. The Herald is not naming the road where Terry was found to protect the victim’s identity.
Chester County Coroner Terry Tinker said Terry, who lived at 205 N. French St., died of a gunshot wound. Tinker would not say how many times or where on his body Terry had been shot.
In the 1990s, according to the State Law Enforcement Division, Terry was convicted of several assault and battery and disorderly conduct, drug and weapons possession, and copper theft. For his most recent conviction, a non-violent burglary in 2007, he was sentenced to three years probation.
Sheriff’s investigators spent much of Monday following leads and searching for suspects, Smith said, but they had not developed anything “concrete” by the end of the day.
“This isn’t the average murder,” he said.
Deputies didn’t find any shell casings or a weapon at the scene, Smith said. They also didn’t find any witnesses to the shooting.
“If there are, they haven’t come forward,” he said.
The rape victim “is (doing) as well as can be expected,” Smith said. “This is definitely a tragedy for her.”
The street where the rape and shooting occurred, he said, is “a pretty quiet area.”
‘Something terrible’
On the curvy road where Mary McClinton of Richburg has made her home for more than four decades, people “wave and speak and go about their business.”
“Don’t nobody bother nobody else,” she said. “Around here, if you hear gunshots, it don’t matter...people don’t think much of it.”
But neighbors in the area are thinking and talking.
Some, like James Jones – whose many grandchildren crowded a dirt patch in front of his home Monday afternoon – are concerned about safety.
“That’s something terrible,” said Jones, who has lived in the area for two years. “You have to be alert.
Jones didn’t hear any gunshots or commotion Sunday night, but he did see flashing police lights.
“You usually hear about this happening in the city,” he said, “but out here in the country, that’s something new.”
Cheryl McCrorey lives just a few feet from the house where the teenager was raped.
“It’s never happened down here,” she said.
McCrorey said it wasn’t until she logged onto Facebook Monday morning and read a post detailing the incident that she realized that Terry had been found dead just down the road from her home.
Tanya Collazo, who spent Monday watching her three grandchildren, said she heard “a loud bang” Sunday night. She went outside and didn’t see anything, but moments later, she saw emergency lights and assumed they were cops.
Collazo says she feels for the teenager – a girl she said would often stay at her home with her brother while they waited for their mother to get home from work.
“She’s a sweet girl,” Collazo said. “She’d come over and play with my grandson.”
Mary McClinton also spent time with the girl – a distant relative – who would occasionally sit in her living room on the days she didn’t visit Collazo.
“She comes down and talks to me,” said McClinton, adding that the area is usually so quiet that she leaves her doors open.
By Monday, though, McClinton’s doors were closed. She hadn’t spoken to the girl’s family, but she did take time to remember a recent milestone in the teenager’s life.
“This month,” McClinton said, the girl ran into her house excitedly shouting, “I got my (learner’s driving) permit!”
CHESTER: Deputies: Rape suspect found shot dead in Chester Co. | Crime | Rock Hill Herald Online