A 21-year-old woman looked directly at Luther Hill in court Tuesday and identified him as the man who sexually assaulted her in the rest room of a Denver medical complex last August.
“He is seated right there,” the slender, pony-tailed woman said as she pointed at Hill.
“I am sure he is the guy … who attacked me. … Not a single doubt,” she said during the first day of Hill’s trial on kidnapping and sexual-assault charges.
The woman, who was working in the billing office of Kaiser Permanente at the Franklin Building, 2045 Franklin St., was assaulted after she went to the restroom to wash her hands.
She testified that the restroom was filled with foul-smelling smoke and that someone was in one of the stalls.
She said that when she hurriedly tried to leave, Hill emerged from a stall, grabbed her and pushed her into a stall, where he repeatedly told her to lift her dress and threatened to kill her if she screamed when other women came into the restroom.
“I said, ‘Please don’t rape me, please,”‘ she told jurors.
She said Hill sexually assaulted her, then left after she promised to tell no one.
The woman said her assailant took time out during the attack to smoke crack cocaine and asked her to smoke it with him.
Hill’s lawyer, Kate Dulitzky, disputed the young woman’s story, saying Hill couldn’t have been the attacker because he was at his mother’s house sleeping with his wife.
Dulitzky also said that the Kaiser Permanente employee initially described her assailant as someone much younger and smaller than the 42-year-old Hill. He also said the woman initially said her attacker had a shaved head in contrast to Hill’s medium-length hair.
“Luther Hill was not in that bathroom,” Dulitzky said. “Luther Hill was over at his mom’s house with his wife when this happened.”
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
