Teenager who killed alleged rapist escapes custody
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Featured Image Credit: KCCI/Polk County Court
A teenager who killed her alleged rapist by stabbing him multiple times has escaped from custody in Iowa.
Pieper Lewis, now 18, escaped from the Fresh Start Women’s Center where she was on probation at around 6:15 am in Des Moines on Friday (4 November).
As revealed in a probation violation report obtained by the Des Moines Register, she allegedly cut off her GPS monitor after leaving the facility.
The teenager had been serving five years of probation after receiving the sentence and a fine after she pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and wilful injury.
In June 2020, Lewis stabbed Zachary Brooks, 37, to death a flat in the Iowa capital when she was just 15 years old after he allegedly raped her.
He received more than 30 stab wounds from the teenager.
While prosecutors did not dispute the teenager's additional claim that she had been a victim of sex trafficking after a period of homelessness, they claimed that Brooks was asleep at the time of the fatal stabbing.
Therefore, they argued, he did not present an immediate risk to the teenager at the time of his death.
The teenager initially faced a potential sentence of 20 years, however, this sentence was deferred under the terms of her probation.
It is now being argued in the probation violation report that the original sentence should be issued following her escape.
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Polk County District judge David M Porter said of the teenager's sentence: "The next five years of your life will be full of rules you disagree with, I'm sure of it.
"This is the second chance that you've asked for. You don't get a third."
The teen's ordered fine was $150,000 which was to be paid to Brooks' family, with the funds being raised through a GoFundMe.
The fundraiser raised more than $250,000, and it was said that additional funds will go towards the teenager's education and helping others in her situation.
Lewis said in a statement after being handed her sentence: "My spirit has been burned, but still glows through the flames.
"Hear me roar, see me glow, and watch me grow. I am a survivor.
"I took a person's life. My intentions that day were not to just to go out and take somebody's life.
"In my mind I felt that I wasn't safe and I felt that I was in danger, which resulted in the acts.
"But it doesn't take away from the fact that a crime was committed."
