Good Samaritan testifies in Elk Grove Village sexual assault trial

“I’m just here to help you.”

Those were the words Anthony DiCaro said he spoke to the distraught, disheveled 27-year-old woman he found crumpled on the sidewalk at the intersection of Devon Avenue and Arlington Heights Road in Elk Grove Village in the early morning hours of Sept. 11, 2010.

“I didn’t know what happened to that girl, but I felt bad for her,” said DiCaro, the Good Samaritan who encountered the woman as he returned home from his overnight shift driving a truck for an Elk Grove Village company.

DiCaro testified for the prosecution Tuesday as William Rouse’s sexual assault trial got under way in Rolling Meadows.

Cook County prosecutors say Rouse, 30, sexually assaulted the woman, who was his wife’s friend and co-worker, last September following a get-together at the Rouse family’s Elk Grove Village home.

DiCaro testified the 5-foot-2-inch, 105 pound woman cried and clutched a metal pipe as she told him about the attack.

“She was in bad shape,” DiCaro said. “Anybody who got close to her, she was going to take out. She was going to swing at me.”

DiCaro called police and retrieved a sweatshirt from his car for the woman, who he said was barefoot, wearing ripped clothes and without her purse or cell phone.

Referring to earlier testimony from the woman that she, the defendant, his wife and a male friend had been drinking that evening, Rouse’s defense attorneys asked DiCaro if the woman appeared to be drunk or high.

He said she did not.

The woman testified that Rouse’s wife had invited her to stay overnight so the women could drive to work together the next day. Rouse’s wife occasionally drove her to work because she lost her driver’s license following a DUI conviction several years ago, the woman said.

At about 5 a.m., several hours after Rouse’s wife had gone to bed and the other guest had left, the woman testified Rouse pulled her hair and pushed her into the couch seat cushions, which made it difficult for her to breathe. Then, he sexually assaulted her, said the woman, who testified Rouse threatened her, saying, “I’ll snap your neck.”

She eventually broke free and ran to the garage where she picked up the metal pipe before seeking help first from neighbors, who didn’t answer knocks on their doors, and then by trying to flag down cars.

“I was giving up. I didn’t know what to do,” she said.

Defense attorneys James P. Casement and Gregory Reed suggested the woman’s perceptions might have been altered by prescription medications. She testified that she had taken prescription drugs that day for anxiety, depression and attention deficit disorder.

Casement also said that no DNA evidence links Rouse to the attack.

Testimony continues Wednesday in Rolling Meadows.