Two victims of multiple brutal sexual assaults on Nov. 9, 2014, testified Tuesday in the trial of Vaylan Glazebrook, charged with seven counts of rape and attempted murder for shooting at a responding police officer.
The victims, both IU students at the time of the attack, took the stand to describe attacks by two armed intruders in their apartment on the 500 block of East 12th Street.
The first witness recounted waking up to a noise and seeing a dark-skinned man standing over her, pointing a black handgun.
“Don’t fucking look at me,” he said, according to the woman.
She pulled a blanket over her head and turned to face the wall. He asked if she had a purse, and she told him no. According to her testimony, he rummaged through her bedroom and grabbed her phone and charger.
Unbeknownst to the first victim, her roommate, the second witness to testify, was across the hall face-to-face with another armed man, this one lighter-skinned.
He asked her if she had a condom, and she found him one in her drawer. Without putting it on, he forced her to perform oral sex.
After a few minutes, he dragged her up and pushed her into the same room as the other woman and armed man.
The men switched victims, and the darker-skinned man assaulted and raped the second witness while the lighter-skinned man assaulted and raped the first witness. According to witness testimony, both suspects raped and assaulted their victim orally, vaginally and anally while holding a gun to each of their bodies.
The darker-skinned man also assaulted the second witness with his fingers.
The men stopped when Bloomington Police Department officer William Abram entered the apartment. The men fired a gun at least once in the apartment before scrambling out the bedroom window.
Abram was answering a 911 call from the two victims’ third roommate. She hid in her bedroom and whispered to emergency dispatchers.
“I think there’s a guy in here trying to rape my roommates,” she said in a 911 call played during the trial. “I hear screaming.”
Abram testified Tuesday that when he arrived in 2014, he found the apartment door ajar and entered. He spotted the lighter-skinned man in the hallway, pulling up his jeans.
The man ran back into the same bedroom he was in before and Abram went outside. He saw the men come out the window and chased them across a parking lot.
Abram saw the muzzle of a gun flash as the darker-skinned man fired at him. Abram returned fire, hitting both men. Still running, the darker-skinned suspect dropped something that hit the ground with a metallic clang.
Abram kept following the darker-skinned man but lost sight of the other. With the help of two additional officers, the darker-skinned man was taken into custody. He was identified as Glazebrook, 19 years old at the time of the crimes.
He was bleeding from a gunshot wound to the right arm.
Later that morning, police found a black handgun near where Abram heard the suspects drop something, and the second man, Michael Deweese, was found in a car, driven by a third man named Jesse Benti-Torres.
Deweese received a 109-year prison sentence in 2016. Benti-Torres is charged with burglary and two counts of assisting a criminal. His case is pending.
In addition to testimony from Abram and the victims, 911 calls from the third roommate and one of the victims were played in court Tuesday. Body camera footage from Abram was also shown and two additional police officers testified.
Glazebrook’s trial for 15 separate felonies will continue at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.
