Tyler

By CASEY KNAUPP
Staff Writer

A girl testified in Smith County Tuesday about being raped by a man while he held a wrench to her throat when she was 15.

Daniel Wayne Tidwell, 28, Tyler, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the child and elected to have a jury decide his punishment, which could be five years to life in prison. The jury in 241st District Judge Jack Skeen’s court will return to the courthouse today for the second day of the punishment trial.

Witnesses testified Tuesday that Tidwell’s DNA was found on the victim and that after he bonded out of jail on the charge, which has been enhanced to a first-degree felony because of his prior felony offense, he was found a year later in Oklahoma by police there.

Defense attorneys contend the sex between Tidwell and the underage girl was consensual, although a minor cannot legally consent to sex.

The victim, now 17, testified she had run away from home and skipped school on Oct. 18, 2006, and was at a friend’s house when Tidwell, whom she said she didn’t know very well, “raped” her. She said she told him no but he didn’t stop. He held a wrench to her throat during the assault, she said.

Afterward, when other people returned to the house in Liberty City, she said she got a ride from someone to a gas station, where she called her father. She was immediately taken to the hospital and examined by a nurse, she said.

Smith County Sheriff Sgt. Tony Dana, who investigated the case, said the victim admitted to having been sexually active before the rape, but that didn’t give Tidwell the right to have sex with her after she said no. “No means no,” he said.

Dana said when a 26-year-old man has sex with a 15-year-old girl, it’s rape.

After Tidwell was arrested in January 2007 for the sexual assault of a child, he bonded out of jail and became a fugitive from justice, he said.

Spiro, Okla., police officer Theo Capes testified that on Oct. 27, 2007, while he was on patrol, he saw a man riding a boy’s bicycle and he recognized him as a man wanted in Texas. He said U.S. marshals had given them pictures and descriptions of Tidwell the day before.

When talking to the man, he said his name was Daniel, then said his name was Jonathan Ray and produced a Texas identification card with Ray’s name on it.

After seeing his face and his tattoos, Capes said he arrested the man and, after showing Tidwell the photographs of himself, the man finally admitted who he was.

Tidwell has a pending misdemeanor charge of bail jumping/failure to appear.

Kim McClung testified for the defense that the girl had stayed with her and her fiance, John Ray, at their home for two to three days in October 2006. She said Tidwell, a good friend of theirs, came over several times while the girl was there but they were never left alone. She said she saw the girl “hanging all over him” and she told Tidwell not to touch her or he would get into trouble because of her age. Ms. McClung said the girl became angry when Tidwell brought his pregnant girlfriend to the house.

She said the girl never told her Tidwell had raped her and said she didn’t remember telling Dana that she had.

She said she knew Tidwell used to use methamphetamine and that he went to the federal penitentiary. Ms. McClung said Tidwell before dated a 16-year-old girl, whom he beat, and had a child. She said she wasn’t surprised he was convicted in 2002 of assaulting another woman who mothered one of his three children and she knew Tidwell to be violent with women in the past.

Ms. McClung said she believed Tidwell had sex with the girl and that, if she had known it was going on, she would have stopped it.

Defense attorney Tonda Curry told jurors during opening statements that her client pleaded guilty to having sex with an underage girl but the sex was a willing act. She said the evidence would fail to prove he used a wrench or threatened the girl and no force was used.

Assistant Smith County district attorneys Joe Murphy and Zach Davis are prosecuting the case.

Tidwell’s prior convictions, beginning in 2002, include a federal felony offense of possessing a machine gun, for which he served prison time twice after his supervised releases were revoked; as well as misdemeanor theft, two driving while intoxicated charges, assault/family violence, and failure to identify/fugitive from justice.