A Clark County judge on Monday sentenced a man accused of raping two women in Clark County to 18 years in prison.
Tracy Loren Montgomery, 32, of Vancouver pleaded guilty earlier this month to first-degree rape and second-degree assault. He also entered a Newton plea — acknowledging that a jury could find him guilty of a crime but not admitting guilt — for third-degree rape.
Montgomery first appeared in court in April 2015, after he was arrested on suspicion of a February 2015 rape and another rape in September 2014.
In February 2015, a woman contacted the Vancouver Police Department to report that she had been assaulted and possibly raped after going to the now-closed Q Nightclub & Lounge in downtown Vancouver with friends. According to court records, she met Montgomery at the bar and agreed to give him a ride home. She let him drive because he knew the way.
Montgomery drove them to a remote area on Lower River Road. When she asked where they were going, he assaulted her, punching her in the face. He pulled over to the side of the road, where he grabbed her by the throat, kept punching her and began removing her clothes, according to court records.
She lost consciousness at times, and Deputy Clark County Prosecutor Aaron Bartlett said Monday that the woman was unsure whether she was raped until DNA evidence matching Montgomery confirmed it.
Court records said the woman identified Montgomery as her attacker, and that investigators contacted staff at the nightclub, who were able to identify him as the man at the club. Montgomery pleaded guilty to first-degree rape and second-degree assault in the case on Oct. 5.
Montgomery’s Newton plea was in response to the accusation that he raped a Clark County woman in her home in September 2014, according to court records. A YWCA staffer read that woman’s statement to the court Monday.
According to the statement, Montgomery would use the promise of drugs to methodically lure women, while taking advantage of the stigma that drug users and addicts face to discredit them.
“You are not all you think you are, and you have nothing now,” the woman wrote.
Bartlett said that Montgomery was implicated in a rape investigation in Portland as well, but prosecutors have yet to charge him formally. Bartlett also said that Montgomery, in his interviews with corrections officials, takes little responsibility for what happened.
Montgomery spoke briefly and quietly Monday, and told the court he made a mistake and needs help.
Montgomery’s attorney, Clark W. Fridley, and the prosecutor’s office agreed to a recommendation of 162 months in prison, the lower end of the standard sentencing range.
Superior Court Judge Bernard Veljacic rejected the recommendation.
“I look at the facts of this case and they’re quite chilling,” he said. He added that keeping people who would do such things away from others is one of the reasons prisons exist.
“We do too much warehousing, in some circumstances, in this country,” he said.
This was not one of those circumstances, he said.
He sentenced Montgomery to 216 months in prison.
Due to the nature of Montgomery’s crimes, the sentence might be even longer. At the end of Montgomery’s term, the state Department of Corrections will review his case, and may recommend additional time.
