ST. GEORGE, Utah, Feb. 28, 2023 (Gephardt Daily) — A 28-year-old man in jail awaiting trial on an August rape charge has been charged with another alleged crime six months earlier.
The alleged victim in the new charges contacted police shortly after reading of the August case in the news, according to court records, for which Raymond Kapongo was arrested in January.
He faces a status conference on both cases March 6 in 5th District Court in St. George. He’s been ordered held without bail since the new case was filed Feb. 23. He’d been unable to raise bail on the Jan. 16 charges, even after it was lowered from an initial $100,000 setting to $30,000.
In the August case, he is charged with rape, sodomy and object rape for the alleged assault of a co-worker while they were on a job together cleaning a house. The woman told police Kapongo forcefully picked her up and carried her into a room where he put her on a bed and pulled her sweatpants down, according to charging documents, even after she told him she was homosexual.
She repeatedly asked him to stop even after he offered her money, according to a probable cause affidavit. She depicted the insertive sex as painful “and she described how she froze up and just wanted him to get it done and over with.”
In the new case, one count of rape, Kapongo is accused of forcibly attacking a woman in March of last year, described as an old friend he wanted to reconnect with on a long car drive, which covered isolated back roads. “The victim stated they were out of the car and she said it started to get weird and she told Raymond she needed to get home,” according to charging documents.
Instead, she said Kapongo picked her up and put her on the back of the car. Despite her repeated protests he continued groping the woman, according to a probable cause affidavit, and was subsequently able to push her into the back seat of the car. There she told police he became “kind of feral” and ripped her pants and underwear down and the sexual contact ensued.
Afterwards Kapongo drove her home, according to the court documents, the two arguing about what had happened with Kapongo insisting “I didn’t do anything that you didn’t say I couldn’t do.”
