Search Warrant: Apology Texted to Gang Rape Victim After Attack

BY BONNIE MEIBERS

Miami University journalism student

The woman who told police three men raped her earlier this year at an Oxford apartment complex received an apology via text message shortly after the attack, according to a search warrant filed in Butler County.

According to that search warrant, filed Feb. 12, the victim received a text that said:

“Man, all I can say is I’m really d*** sorry, IK [I know] it won’t fix it but… know I really did want something with us and IK [I know] it’s no chance at all after all this s***, pray to GOD you forgive GN [goodnight].”

Three men are awaiting trial early next year on a 72-count indictment charging them with rape and kidnapping in the case, which Butler County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser called “a very brutal case” and “one of the worst” he’s seen in all his years as a prosecutor.

It was not clear who sent the text message to the victim. The search warrant only provided the telephone number from the phone that sent the woman the message at 12:24 a.m. Feb. 12.

Three men, Rodney Gibson, 21, Elijah Mincy, 21, and Roger Simpson, 23, were arrested in July on the charges outlined in the indictment. Mincy’s trial is scheduled for Jan. 23 in Hamilton, Ohio. Gibson’s trial is scheduled for Feb. 20 and Simpson’s is scheduled for Jan. 2. The cases are to be heard by Judge Michael Oster.

Oster denied reducing the bond for Mincy and Gibson in September, and they remain in jail. Simpson did not request a reduction of his bond and also remains in jail.

The warrant said the first-floor apartment where the approximately four-hour long assault occurred was rented by Eric Mincy.

Oxford Police Department detective Matt Blauvelt filed a search warrant for the Level 27 apartment at 3770 Southpointe Pkwy.

Blauvelt searched the apartment because he had good cause to believe that the following were there: “any and all items that could contain biological evidence from a sexual assault,” any clothing left by the victim of the sexual assault and a cellular phone with a number that had texted the victim the night of the assault.

According to the search warrant inventory, obtained by Patch.com, Blauvelt took several blankets, sheets, mattress covers, a watch, a jar of marijuana, a metal grinder, a black scale, a black cell phone and a biological swab.

Gmoser could not comment on whether the cellphone the Oxford Police Department found was the cellphone they went into the apartment looking for.

Blauvelt had reason to believe those items were in the apartment because the victim told him she was forced to engage in vaginal, oral and anal intercourse.

Gmoser said that there is a potential for the cases to be heard together.

“There could be consolidation of the cases, unless one of them has implicated the others in a different crime, then they would be heard separately,” Gmoser said. “So at this point it’s hard to say.”

-- Top photos: The sexual assault took place in a Level 27 apartment, just minutes away from Miami University's campus. Photo by Bonnie Meibers.