A Georgia man has been sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and sexually assaulting two college students who were walking home from a school event on Halloween in 2021.
Brandon Rounsaville, 29, was arrested on Oct. 31, 2021, and was convicted Friday of kidnapping, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated sodomy, aggravated sexual battery, robbery and making terroristic threats, according to prosecutors.
The case is an example of "every parent's worst nightmare that some stranger is going to snatch their child off the side of the street and sexually assault them," Coweta County District Attorney Herb Cranford Jr. told Fox News Digital.
He added that most rape cases in Coweta County and across the nation usually deal with perpetrators who know the victims, but "the most terrifying crimes … are done by strangers."
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In this case, the stranger — Rounsaville — threatened the victims' lives with a gun, though it is still unclear whether he really had a firearm in his possession at the time.
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The two victims, both female students at the University of West Georgia, were walking coming home from a school trip on Lovvorn Road near campus around 4:30 a.m. They had excited a bus and decided to walk the remainder of the way home when Rounsaville approached them, according to county records.
Rounsaville threatened to kill the victims if they did not do as he said and forced them to strip and perform sex acts on him behind an apartment building. One of the victims got free and ran to the front of the building while screaming for help, prosecutors said.
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Evidence presented in a Carroll County courtroom showed Rounsaville dragging that victim into parking lot, where he sexually assaulted her between two vehicles.
He eventually field the scene due to the victims' screaming, at which point the two women called 911, prosecutors said.
Police found Rounsaville about 30 minutes later hiding beneath a bridge and took him into custody.
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Prosecutors pursued a life sentence from the beginning of the case but would have offered life with the possibility of parole had Rounsaville taken some responsibility for his crimes to spare re-traumatizing the victims in court, but he did not, Cranford said.
"After trial, we strongly argued for life without parole. While he has a right to go to trial, he declined to take any responsibility, he declined to spare the victims the retraumatization of trial. So, I think it is very appropriate that he die in prison," Cranford explained.
"We see a lot of bad stuff, and this is in the top tier," he continued.
Both victims gave emotional testimony against Rounsaville and identified him in court.
