Fresh out of prison for attacking a female real estate agent, D’Shawn Carr was charged with, but acquitted of, trying to rape a convenience store customer.
Six weeks later, he was accused of attacking two women in Hazel Dell last winter.
The Vancouver man pleaded guilty Monday in Clark County Superior Court to first-degree rape and unlawful imprisonment in connection to both Hazel Dell cases.
Because of his criminal history, Carr, 22, faces a minimum prison sentence of between 11 1/2 years and just over 15 years in prison. Carr’s case will then go before the state’s Indeterminate Sentencing Review Board, which could keep him incarcerated for the rest of his life.
Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Scott Jackson said he will request a minimum sentence of 15 years at Carr’s sentencing hearing Sept. 22; defense attorney David Kurtz has agreed to recommend a sentence of no less than 13 years in prison.
Jackson told Judge Rich Melnick that Carr attacked the first Hazel Dell woman, a store clerk, the night of Jan. 30 as she was walking home from work along Highway 99. He approached her from behind and held a knife to her throat.
He ushered her to a nearby used car lot and “proceeded to rape her with the knife,” Jackson said.
Three nights later, Jackson said, Carr was caught on surveillance video accosting a woman in the parking lot of Winco Foods on Highway 99. He followed her to her car and forced her inside the vehicle. She escaped after a Samaritan in the parking lot confronted Carr, Jackson said.
Investigators linked Carr to the first sexual assault through a DNA match, the deputy prosecutor said.
Both women were strangers to Carr.
The judge ordered a pre-sentence investigation of Carr — examining his background and likelihood of reoffending — prior to sentencing.
He was ordered to be held without bail in the Clark County Jail.
Carr was first accused of preying on women as a teen.
When he was 17, Carr attacked a female real estate agent at knifepoint in a model home. He pleaded guilty in November 2008 to second-degree assault and first-degree burglary and received a 38-month prison sentence for that crime.
He was arrested again less than two years later — Aug. 30, 2010 — after a woman alleged that he followed her from a Fourth Plain Boulevard convenience store and grabbed her, dragging her across a field. A jury acquitted Carr after hearing at the December trial about a lack of physical evidence of an attack and conflicting statements by a key witness.
Laura McVicker: 360-735-4516; laura.mcvicker@columbian.com; www.twitter.com/col_courts; www.facebook.com/reportermcvicker.
