Man accused in assaults pleads not guilty

A Vancouver man pleaded not guilty Wednesday to attacking two women in Hazel Dell.

Defense attorney David Kurtz told the judge that Dshawn D. Carr, 21, understood the allegations against him and didn’t need them read aloud. They include charges of second-degree attempted kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment and fourth-degree assault relating to allegations that Carr assaulted a woman in the Hazel Dell Winco parking lot on Feb. 2 while she was loading groceries in her car.

Carr also entered a not guilty plea to first-degree kidnapping and first-degree rape relating to allegations he sexually assaulted a woman in a used car parking lot on Highway 99 three nights earlier.

Clark County Superior Court Judge Diane Woolard set trial for April 11.

The two cases will be tried separately, she said.

Carr was arrested the night of the Winco attack after the 50-year-old woman told investigators that an unknown man had grabbed her by the hair as she was loading groceries and pushed her down into the car. A struggle ensued, and she was able to bite her attacker’s hand, according to court documents.

Carr was found in the area a short time later. He had a fresh bite injury on his thumb, police said.

Investigators said they then linked Carr to the parking lot attack after the 20-year-old victim identified him. An employee of the Hazel Dell Walmart store, she had left work and was walking along Northeast Highway 99 on her way home.

Carr allegedly accosted her and displayed a knife, ushering her to a nearby used car lot. He told her to lie down on the ground, where he raped her, according to the criminal affidavit.

Six weeks before the attacks, Carr was acquitted by a Clark County jury of a similar attack last August on a woman walking home from a Plaid Pantry store at Fourth Plain Boulevard and Kauffman Avenue.

Prior to that, he served a 38-month sentence for attacking a female real estate agent at knifepoint in 2007.

Carr is being held in the Clark County Jail on $1 million bail.