Student victim of sexual battery

A Georgia Military College freshman is behind bars, as of Feb. 9, at the Baldwin County Jail after the Milledgeville Police Department charged him with sexual battery involving a 21-year-old female Georgia College student Sunday, Feb. 6.

Jamal Tyler, a GMC running back, went downtown with the female prior to the incident, said Capt. Dray Swicord, MPD chief of detectives.

“I think they visited several different places, and actually met the suspect at another place,” Swicord said. “From our understanding, the suspect and the victim were not really acquaintances, (they met) through the friend.”

At approximately 3:30 a.m. Sunday, MPD was dispatched to College Station Apartments in response to a sexual assault incident.

Public Safety’s Sgt. Nick Reonas and Officer Gary Purvis were first to arrive on the scene due to proximity.

“Our part in it was getting there and stopping the subject from leaving, which if we wouldn’t have gotten there, I have no doubt he would have been gone by the time the city got there,” Reonas said. “I was really happy with our response. I was happy that were were able to stop the subject before he got away.”

Once they arrived, they saw a person matching the description of the suspect running down the stairs from the apartment in question. They detained Tyler and attempted to take him into custody.

“We wrestled with him for a few minutes. He’s a football player, so he’s a pretty big boy, but he wouldn’t comply still, and I ended up getting my taser out and taking the cartridge off,” Purvis said. “And he put his hands behind his back, and that’s when we handcuffed him. That was our part in it.”

MPD arrived on the scene not long after and booked Tyler.

Among the property collected by MPD was a used condom taken from Tyler.

A sexual assault kit was taken from the victim for processing. However, the assault kits take four to 12 weeks to receive results.

MPD said the woman may not have been raped, which would be a sexual assault charge. Instead Tyler was charged with sexual battery.

“(Sexual assault/battery calls are) something we respond to several times a year, off-campus and on-campus,” Reonas said. “We have a couple of reports that happen every year.”

Swicord said sexual battery is the more appropriate charge in this case.

“So we’re saying penetration never occurred,” Swicord said. “We always do (a sexual assault kit) for (the victim’s) safety, but as far as male DNA being present in the sexual assault kit, we don’t think there will be any.”

Sexual battery is a high misdemeanor in Georgia, which is punishable by serving one to five years in jail, depending on the suspect’s previous history with the law, Swicord said.

Both Tyler and the victim had alcohol in their systems the morning of the incident.

“Alcohol was used on both sides, whether it was abused or not abused,” Swicord said. “Obviously you have one person who’s not 19 so he obviously can’t be drinking, but she’s 21 and she can drink if she wants to.”

Posted by Katelyn Hebert on Feb 10 2011. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.