(Memphis) Police say a teenage girl is recovering after being raped on Valentine’s Day. This wasn’t a date rape. Investigators say it was a stranger who kidnapped the 16-year-old girl, who was just walking down the street in South Memphis, close to downtown.
Police have arrested 35-year-old Kotay Floyd for the crime.
One woman says she sees him all the time.
“Walking past, he tells me that I look nice,” said the woman who didn’t want to be identified.
She see’s him on the same street, Georgia Avenue, where police say Floyd grabbed the teenage girl and dragged her into an empty field. Police say he held the 16-year-old at knife point as he raped and sodomized her.
“If that would happen to my daughter, you would be looking for me to lock me up,” said Memphis resident Johnny Mathis.
It’s a brutal crime, the unidentified woman says she can’t believe.
“He never gave you an impression that he could be dangerous?” asked Reporter Sabrina Hall.
“Never. Never! Never!” said the woman.
“Frankly speaking, knowing him, I wouldn’t think he would do something like that,” said Carolyn Young, who knows Floyd from around the South Memphis neighborhood.
People who know Floyd, like Young, describe him as a quiet, respectable guy but police say Floyd fought with officers as they tried to arrest him Friday on South Orleans Street. He fought so hard that he had to be taken to The MED for his injuries. Police caught him just hours after he allegedly had his way with the teenage girl.
“The police was questioning everybody yesterday,” said the woman. “Everybody said they can’t believe it and they can’t see it happening.”
If the teenage girl made it all up, she didn’t make-up Floyd’s criminal record. He was convicted of aggravated kidnapping and robbery in the late 90’s and recently arrested for aggravated assault and domestic violence. Just this past Summer, police say he beat a woman with a closed fist and threatened to stab her with a knife.
“Wow. I didn’t know that,” said the unidentified woman.
It’s also a knife police say that Floyd used to hold down the 16-year-old girl in the Georgia Ave. field and brutally rape her, “I still can’t see it. But if he did do it, my heart goes out to the little girl that it happened to.”
Police say the teenage girl identified Floyd as her attacker in a photo line-up. He’s being held in jail on a $250,000 bond.