Man sentenced to 8.5 years for rape outside car dealership

SEATTLE — The homeless man accused of raping a woman three years ago in a Ballard car dealership was sentenced to prison, officials said Monday.

Christopher Teel, 27, was ordered to serve a sentence of 8.5-years-to-life after being convicted of first-degree rape and unlawful imprisonment for the incident in 2018 in the bathroom at Carter Volkswagen, a spokesman for the King County Prosecutor’s Office said.

The victim had dropped her vehicle off for service moments before the attack occurred, KOMO-TV reported.

Teel, who is 6-feet-3-inches tall and weighed about 250 pounds at the time, had been accused of following a 40-year-old woman into the women’s bathroom, according to officials and court records.

Teel forced open the bathroom’s stall door, grabbed the victim by the neck and pulled her out. She screamed, and he choked her, court documents say. Teel told her “you want this, God wants this,” before sexually assaulting the woman.

“He was able to gain access to the stall — that’s when he was able to grab me by my throat and my shoulder and he threw me down on the ground in front of the handicap stall and we fought for several minutes,” the woman told a documentary film producer about the attack later.