AN ALLEGED rape victim who was attacked after being dragged onto a river bank as she walked home from the pub said she was told she would be killed if she went to the police.

The woman said she was threatened by Abdel-Aziz Al-Shamary, who the prosecution say had been watching pornographic videos involving ‘outdoor sex’ on his phone hours before the attack in Darlington town centre.

In a recorded interview she said she was grabbed and pushed to the floor, hit in the face and stomach, before being raped.

The woman said she told Mr Al-Shamary to stop, but he refused.
She said: “He said ‘If you say anything to police I am going to kill you.’”

Asked how that made her feel, she said: “Horrible. Scared and frightened.”

She said her nose was left bleeding after being punched and she was helped by two women who came and sat with her and gave her a tissue after Mr Al-Shamary had left the scene near St Cuthbert’s Way.

Mr Al-Shamary, who denies rape and attempted rape, but has admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm, is accused of pouncing on the woman on a grassed area near the River Skerne, behind Halford’s, sometime around midnight on May 16/17 this year.

The jury in his trial at Teesside Crown Court has heard how some of the woman’s DNA was found on the his underwear.

She told how her alleged assailant took the glasses off her face and threw them away, while her bus pass and cigarettes were also missing.

Prosecutor Paul Abrahams said the woman had left The Greyhound pub in Parkgate, at about 11.25pm, having had three pints and a cocktail, before walked onto St Cuthbert’s Way towards Brunswick Street.

Mr Al-Shamary was also seen in Parkgate, but walked parallel along Borough Road with a friend, Jabar Abdel Alwan, before reaching and crossing St Cuthbert’s Way.

The two men were walking to a pizza takeaway to get a lift, but the second man left the defendant behind when he began talking to the woman.

Both Mr Al-Shamary and the complainant were then seen on CCTV near the River Skerne, before appearing to go their separate ways.

But Mr Abrahams said the 21-year-old defendant, of Pensbury Street, Darlington, then doubled back on himself in the direction of the woman, before assaulting and raping her.

Statements from several witnesses were read including a barmaid at The Greyhound, Amanda Jenkinson, who said the alleged victim had seemed in a “happy mood”.

Meanwhile, the friend who accompanied Mr Al-Shamary said he had been “very drunk”, having consumed two bottles of Jack Daniels whiskey that afternoon.

He said: “He could not walk very well and was not making much sense.”
Rebecca Winn, one of the two women who stopped to help, alerting police, said she was a passenger in a car travelling along St Cuthbert’s Way.

She said she saw a man dragging a woman, who was laid on her belly, down to the river, and it looked like she was struggling.

The witness said they parked the car and ran over to help, comforting the woman.

She said: “She [the complainant] was on the floor, her trousers and everything were near her ankles and she had blood all over her.

“She was very scared, upset, could not stop crying and was gasping for air. She said that he [Mr Al-Shamary] had bust her nose and that he raped her.”

A 999 call was also played to the jury in which an operator asked if the complainant required an ambulance and requesting a description of her alleged attacker who had run off towards Yarm Road.

The trial continues.