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As Deangilo Minor rode his bicycle toward parked Kansas City police cars one day last June, a woman being interviewed by police said: “That’s him!”
An officer pointed a gun at Minor. The teenager glanced behind him, expecting to see who the officer wanted. No one was there.
Within seconds, police handcuffed Minor. At 19, he headed to jail to await trial for attempted rape. Authorities soon alleged that he also had raped another Kansas City woman weeks earlier. Both women claimed their attacker hit them with a brick.
Minor told investigators he was innocent, but they didn’t believe him.
Stuck behind bars, Minor lost his girlfriend and apartment — but not his mother’s unwavering support.
Now, 10 months later, he’s been saved — by DNA.
Prosecutors dropped the charges this week.
“This case casts into doubt the reliability of eyewitnesses,” said Dan Ross, Minor’s defense lawyer.
Ted Hunt, assistant county prosecutor, said the case showed the link between DNA and justice.
“It convicts and also exonerates,” Hunt said. “That’s a good thing for people to keep in mind.”
Across the country, DNA tests have freed hundreds of inmates wrongly convicted of rape and other crimes, including a Texas man released Wednesday after 23 years in prison.
Unlike those cases, DNA saved Minor before trial.
But nothing can take back his first ride in a police wagon and more than nine months in jail, or turning 20 years old behind bars.
For months, as they waited on the DNA results, neither Minor nor his mother realized that something else existed that could help his case.
In August, one of the victims told police that her attacker had come back and raped her. She wanted to know why he had been let out of jail.
But Minor had not been let out.
Looking back, Minor’s mother is grateful that she and her son survived this ordeal.
“We both had those breaking points when we felt like we couldn’t go on,” Claresa Minor said. “Luckily, the breaking points weren’t at the same time.”
Jail takes a toll
Minor awoke last June 6 expecting to have a good day. He left his Independence apartment eager to go to his grandmother’s 50th birthday party in Kansas City.
He put his bike on the front rack of the bus he took to the city, where he got out near a store to buy a T-shirt.
He strolled past police cars, parked his bike and went inside the J-Mart store at 2607 Independence Ave., where he paid $5 for a white T-shirt. He put it on and threw away the old, grass-stained one.
He climbed on his bike and headed off to check out what the police were doing.
As Minor approached, a 40-year-old woman told police, “It’s him.”
When an officer pointed his gun at Minor, the teen prepared to duck, out of the line of fire.
But the officer said, “Get off the bike — put your hands against the wall.”
Minor did as he was told. Police slid him down the wall. He scraped his arm on the way down, just before police cuffed him.
Police told him he was accused of attempted rape. He told them he had just bought a new shirt and thrown away his old one.
They asked: Why did you throw it away?
“Because it was dirty,” Minor said.
Later, at the police headquarters holding cell, a worried Minor tried to get some sleep on the floor. “I had on a paper suit, and I was really freezing.”
Prosecutors charged him with attempted rape and attempted sodomy for the June 6 attack behind an apartment building at Sixth Street and Prospect Avenue. The victim escaped, but not before getting hit on the head with a brick.
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