By WECT Staff | May 12, 2021 at 10:13 AM EDT – Updated May 12 at 7:40 PM
WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – A jury found a man accused of brutally attacking two UNCW students in 2016 guilty on all charges Wednesday morning.
Titus Lee was found guilty of two counts of kidnapping, two counts of first-degree rape, robbery with a dangerous weapon, and first-degree burglary.
In total, Lee faced seven different judgments, according to the judge, who sentenced him Wednesday morning to more than 100 years in prison.
Six of the judgements were for a minimum of 240 months each – that’s 20 years – while the first judgement saw Lee receive a minimum of 73 months in prison.
“We thank the jury for their verdict. They had to pour over three and a half weeks of testimony and 465 exhibits before rendering guilty verdicts for every crime charged,” District Attorney Ben David said in a statement.
“Titus Lee will spend the rest of his life in prison. For the career prosecutors and detectives who handled this case, few of us can remember a worse crime of violence where the victims survived to testify. This was a hate-filled, hours-long crime spree that was gratuitous in its evil,” David said.
The male victim in the alleged assault previously testified that Lee, wearing a mask and wielding a gun, attacked him and his girlfriend as they were sitting on the porch of their apartment on Litchfield Way on Nov. 22, 2016. Lee lived with his mother and sister in the same apartment complex.
Lee, the victim testified, pistol-whipped him causing a wound that later required over a dozen staples to close. After that attack, the former college student testified that he was tied up in a closet while Lee raped his girlfriend.
Over the course of a crime that lasted for hours, the victims said they were driven to an ATM and forced to withdraw cash. They also had their Xbox and other electronics were stolen. They said Lee told them he would find them and kill them if they called the police.
Terrified, they drove all the way to the male victim’s parents’ house in Cherry Grove, South Carolina, for help after they said Lee finally left.
Lee was arrested weeks after the attack in Philadelphia by U.S. Marshals.
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