Police arrest accused rapist

OAKLAND PARK, Fla. (WSVN) -- Deputies have arrested a man who, they said, walked into a South Florida woman's apartment and raped her while her children were home.

"He raped me and nearly choked me to death," said the 26-year-old woman, who wanted to remain anonymous. The single mother of two daughters, ages seven and three, is nursing bruises to her neck as well as other physical and emotional trauma she suffered as a victim of rape. "Sometimes I just feel blank, sometimes I cry. It's almost like surreal to me, like a nightmare," she said.

The brutal attack happened early Thursday morning at her home near 51st Street and Northeast Sixth Avenue. The accuser said Sylvester Bryant stalked her for a month before attacking her that morning in her bed. "The look on his face when he was choking me, he was choking me so hard that he was going to kill me. He was going to strangle me," she recalled. "When I tried to defend myself, it got worse."

The young mother said Bryant entered her home and attacked her after she accidentally fell asleep with her front door unlocked. "He was stalking me. Every time he would see me, he would want to talk to me, and I'm like 'I have to go, I'm busy,'" she said. "About two days ago, he was knocking on my door. He knocked on my door and ran off."

That morning, she said, Bryant opened the unlocked door, sneaked into the home and slammed her children's bedroom door shut. He left her door open. She said her oldest daughter saw the accused rapist and heard the attack. "My daughter's a witness. My daughter heard, and she started crying, and I'm so devastated that she heard everything," she said. "What I was just thinking was, he would probably try to do something to my kids, and I rather just let him do stuff to me."

The ordeal was interrupted by the return of her boyfriend, who had been at the home earlier. She said the sound of his car pulling up caused the accused to run. "He grabbed his clothes, and he ran off naked," she said.

Bryant is currently being held on no bond at the main Broward County jail on three sexual battery counts and a burglary count.

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