Fox Chapel woman recounts abduction from Waterworks
Akron, OHIO -- A Fox Chapel woman abducted in April from The Waterworks mall maintained her composure for five hours on the witness stand Thursday, detailing a harrowing ordeal during which she was raped and eventually abandoned with her young daughter on a snowy Cleveland street.
She told a Summit County, Ohio, courtroom that she had gone to the Giant Eagle at the mall near Aspinwall on the morning of April 7 to get some things for an Easter Sunday brunch.
She said she had just finished placing her 16-month-old daughter in the rear seat of her vehicle and groceries in the rear when defendant Jimmy Lee Tayse "put a knife to my daughter's throat and said, 'Drive, or I'll cut her.'"
She then described in detail, without obvious emotion, how Tayse took control for the next five hours, sexually assaulting her three times in an Ohio hotel room.
Tayse, 30, of Johnstown in Cambria County, is charged with 15 felonies connected to the abduction and its aftermath. If he is convicted of the most serious charges -- three counts of rape and two counts of kidnapping -- he could be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Among the charges are two counts of aggravated robbery for incidents in Summit County. Prosecutors said Tayse forced the woman to take out $100 from an ATM machine on Grant Street in Akron and to buy $500 in American Express gift cards from a Giant Eagle in Cuyahoga Falls.
The woman testified repeatedly that she pleaded with Tayse not to harm her daughter. "It took us a long time to have her," the woman said she told her abductor. "Please don't take her away from her daddy."
The names of the woman, her husband and their baby are being withheld to protect their identities.
The mother said Tayse released her and her daughter in an eastside Cleveland neighborhood about 4 p.m. the day before Easter.
Tayse was arrested by Cleveland police on Easter Sunday afternoon, according to Summitt County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh, after a woman reported she recognized the victim's vehicle when she pulled up behind it on a city street.
The witness, Denise Black of Cleveland, had seen news accounts of the abduction and remembered the vehicle and its license plate number, assistant prosecutor Mary Ann Kovach said.
Walsh, who conducted the direct questioning of the woman, said outside of court that her office was asked to take the case by Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. because Ohio has broader prosecutorial authority.
In Ohio, an offender can be tried for crimes in another state, Walsh said, as long as the offenses are alleged to be part of a continuing course of criminal activity.
The trial is expected to last through the end of next week.
