Man gets 26 years for raping Texarkana, Texas, teen in 2014

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New Boston, Texas—A Texarkana man was sentenced to 26 years in prison Wednesday for his role in the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in 2014.

Tevin Trevon Willis, aka T-Will, chose to plead guilty Tuesday to two counts of sexual assault. However, Willis asked that a jury assess punishment. The jury handed down sentences of 13 years for each count and 102nd District Judge Bobby Lockhart ordered the terms to run one after the other. The jury also fined Willis $5,000 on each count.

The girl testified Wednesday that she was visiting a friend Aug. 15, 2014, at an apartment on Hazel Street in Texarkana, Texas, when her friend left to see a younger relative home. The teen said Rickey Mask, 22, wouldn’t stop touching her and managed to get her alone in the apartment’s bedroom. There Mask pushed a couch up to the door and assaulted the girl. Willis, who had just emerged from a shower, worked his way around the couch, entered the bedroom and assaulted the girl as well, the victim said.

The two men took turns assaulting the teen in various ways. At the time, Willis was free on bond he posted for a pending rape charge in Miller County, Ark.

The alleged victim in the Arkansas case testified Wednesday also. The woman said Willis raped her at her Texarkana, Ark., apartment May 12, 2014, while her three young children slept in another room. The woman said she and a couple of friends were socializing when Willis knocked on her door and asked for a smoke. The woman said Willis walked in uninvited when she went to get him a cigarette and was in the bathroom when her friends left.

The woman said Willis wouldn’t take no for an answer. Willis elbowed her in the face and attacked her in the living room, the woman testified.

Willis had been free on bond for less than two months when he attacked the Texarkana, Texas, teen. Assistant District Attorneys Kelley Crisp and Lauren Richards said Willis’ inability to control himself while out on bail, coupled with his failure to show at his first trial setting earlier this month, are evidence Willis would never successfully complete a term of probation.

“Probation, he can’t even make it on bond,” Richards argued in closing remarks.

Willis’ case was initially set for jury selection March 15 but Willis didn’t show. A couple of days later he was arrested at the Sunset Apartments in Texarkana, Texas, where he was hiding in a closet.

Willis’ lawyer, Derric McFarland of Texarkana, asked the jury to recommend probation as they can if they hand down a sentence of 10 years or less. McFarland argued that Willis has a family who loves him and asked the jury to consider Willis’ lack of prior convictions.

Crisp said Willis deserves prison, not probation.

“I hope I never see a day when a man who rapes a child gets probation in Bowie County,” Crisp said. “That man belongs in the penitentiary where there are no women and there are no children.”

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