Victim testifies in Plumas Lake attempted rape case

A 20-year-old woman testified Thursday that she was assaulted last year in her bedroom at her Plumas Lake home by a man wearing a black hood and a bandana over his face.

Marcus Charles Hagins, the woman's friend from East Nicolaus High School, is charged with assault to commit rape and other crimes on May 15, 2009.

Prosecutors believe Hagins took the woman's house key after she asked him to hold her purse while she was in a dressing room at Roseville Galleria, then used the key six or seven months later to enter her house in the middle of the night.

In her opening statement, Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Dupré-Tokos told Yuba County Superior Court jurors that a state Department of Justice expert will testify that Hagins' fingerprints were found on the doorknob of the woman's bedroom and on duct tape that he used to restrain her.

Hagins' Sacramento attorney, Michael G. Bowman, did not make an opening statement.

The woman said she went to bed about 1 a.m. and awoke a few hours later to find someone taping her mouth shut. The assailant growled, "If you say a word I'll slit your (expletive) throat" and held a sharp metal object to her throat, she testified.

After ordering her to turn over on her stomach, the man allegedly used the tape to bind her wrists together behind her back and her ankles together, then put a bondage device — a ball gag — in her mouth.

The woman's mother, who was in the next bedroom, said she heard muffled voices and opened her daughter's door a couple of inches to see a tall, thin man leaning over the bed. Fearing she would be held captive along with her daughter, she closed the door, picked up a phone in the hallway and headed for the front door, dialing 911, she testified.

Jurors listened to a tape of the mother's panicked call.

She then headed back to her daughter's bedroom, saying, "I don't have a gun," and kicked open the door, she said.

By that time, the man had turned on the bedroom light and was saying, "Where's my knife?" according to the daughter, who testified she had nudged it under her body with her arm.

The mother said she ran out the front door again, followed seconds later by the man. Once in the yard, he clenched his fists, stuck out his chest and growled at her, she said.

The mother testified the man ran to a white sedan parked around the corner and sped away without turning on the headlights.

A neighbor returning home from work about 4:15 a.m. testified she saw the car "peel out."

Under cross-examination by Bowman, the alleged victim said she and Hagins had been close friends at East Nicolaus High School and during the summer after graduation in June 2008 but were never involved romantically. When they attended separate community colleges in the fall, they began drifting apart, she said.

But the two went to the mall together in September or October. In December, Hagins text-messaged her, complaining that she and other high school friends were no longer "hanging out" with him, she said.

The woman said she was offended by the message but went to the movies with Hagins in January on her 20th birthday. The last she heard from him before the May 15 incident was a casual text message about two weeks before, she said.

The man in her bedroom never touched her sexually or made sexual remarks, she told Bowman.

Dupré-Tokos said a detective will testify that numerous pornographic and bondage photos were found on Hagins' computers, including photos of the victim and other young women altered to show bindings and ball gags.

The trial is expected to continue into next week. Hagins, who is being held in Yuba County Jail on $500,000 bail, appeared in court Thursday with close-cropped hair and wearing a dark suit over a white shirt and tie.

CONTACT Rob Young at 749-4710 or at ryoung@appealdemocrat.com.