Police: Mom choked, raped by 19-year-old

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. (WSVN) -- A South Florida neighborhood is on alert after police said a man entered a woman's home and raped her while her newborn baby lay beside her.

Police arrested 19-year-old Gary Lenard Holmes of Pompano Beach, suspected in the home invasion that turned into a violent rape in Coral Springs.

Jaemi Levine lives in the area and witnessed the arrest. "He was screaming, he was holding the knife to his throat, he was crying and saying, 'Bleep the police,'" she said. "He had this huge thing that he threw at the police."

According to authorities, a 25-year-old woman, who had only given birth to a baby a week ago, was beaten, choked, raped, sodomized and cut by Holmes as the infant slept nearby.

"I would have never known that he would do something like that," said his grandmother who did not want to show her face on camera. "How dare he do that? Go out there and then go in somebody's house? He didn't have to do that. He ain't no poor person or nothing like that, because we give him whatever he needs."

The home invasion happened along Royal Palm Boulevard and University Park, Sunday night. "This is a very quiet neighborhood where everybody knows most each other," said Coral Springs Police Sgt. Dave Kirkland, "and, at this time, we don't know why this person chose this house."

Police said a 25-year-old woman was inside the home with an infant when the intruder snuck into her home through an open sliding glass door. The woman tried to call police on her cell phone, but it was batted away. The line, however, remained open, and the dispatcher could hear a struggle.

The dispatcher managed to trace the call to the area of 23rd Street and Northwest 95th Avenue and police responded to the area to try and triangulate the signal. When police received a second call from a landline from the home, police were able to respond within minutes. "The communications center received a second phone call a couple minutes later from a female occupant saying that somebody had broken in to her house," said Kirkland, "and that she was sexually assaulted; the suspect was running out of her house."

Officers from several agencies descended on the area, looking for the person who matched the description of the intruder. About four minutes after the second phone call, they confronted Holmes in front of another home. Police said, he was armed with a knife and he held it to his throat. After they persuaded him to drop the knife, they arrested him.

Police said the victim made a smart move by calling police and leaving the line open. "As soon as there was a problem, she called on her cell phone," said Kirkland. "Even though she wasn't able to communicate, she kept an open line, and that was instrumental because it allowed dispatchers to triangulate a close proximity to where the call came from."

Now, the women in the community are forming a neighborhood watch and vow that this incident won't happen again. "I'm very, very upset and I'm very mad," said Debbie Knoll. "We're all here to stand with her."

The infant was never harmed during this crime. Holmes remains behind bars and faces three counts of armed sexual battery and two counts of burglary of an occupied dwelling. He is scheduled to face a bond court judge sometime Tuesday.

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