Staff photos / Ed Runyan Quentell Elhakim, 30, of West Middlesex, Pa., was the last witness in his rape trial Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, saying the woman he met on a dating app and met in person two days later at her East Side Youngstown house never told him she did not want to have sex. One of his attorneys is Tony Meranto, at right.

YOUNGSTOWN — When Quentell Elhakim, 30, of West Middlesex, Pa., took the stand as the last witness in his rape trial Wednesday, he did not shy away from telling the jury that he had sex with a Youngstown woman Jan. 8, 2023, a couple of days after they met on a dating app.

The woman never said she did not want to have sex, Elhakim said.

Much of his testimony matched what the alleged victim said on Tuesday when she testified: He arrived at her house at about 2:30 a.m., walked into her house while she finished getting ready, they smoked marijuana in his car for about 15 minutes (she smoked little; he smoked more) and then they went back in the house.

As they sat on the couch, he moved closer to her. He pulled her legs onto his lap. Wine spilled on the couch and it was cleaned up. And after a little while they had sex multiple times, with her asking if he had a condom and Elhakim taking several from his jacket and using one.

They also partly agreed that the woman did not tell Elhakim she did not want to have sex with him or tell him to leave, even though she texted a friend in another state and indicated she was ready for her friend to call Youngstown police to come help her.

That friend did contact police, leading to Youngstown police arriving shortly after the sex ended and police questioning Elhakim, but releasing him from the scene.

Testimony in the case concluded Wednesday afternoon. Closing arguments will be given this morning and then the jury will begin to deliberate. Judge Anthony Donofrio is presiding over the trial.

ALLEGED VICTIM

The woman testified that she gave Elhakim numerous signals that she was not interested in sex. And at one point when he was groping her she said, “I thought we were just getting to know each other. You just came over here for conversation.”

She said Elhakim remarked that she “had a dress on. It’s 3 a.m., and I apologized for giving him the impression that sex was what I wanted.”

The woman testified that she tried to encourage him to leave by being on the phone with someone for 14 minutes. She said he told her to “get off your phone” and “was a little irritated that I was focusing on the spill” when she was cleaning it up.

She said that because Elhakim was so much larger than her 4-foot-11 frame, she was “fearful” because he “wasn’t listening to my boundaries.” She feared that if she “asked him to leave, he would hurt me.”

Elhakim was asked during his testimony whether the woman ever told him she did not want to have sex, and he said no.

DIFFERENCES IN ACCOUNTS

One thing that did not match in their testimony was that the woman said Elhakim kept moving closer to her on the couch and she just moved farther away. But Elhakim said “We scooted toward each other.”

Another difference was that Elhakim said he pulled her legs onto his legs to put lotion on them because she did not have massage oil. He said she pulled her legs back off of him when her phone started to ring. The woman testified that she moved her legs off him and “told him I want my legs on the floor.”

Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Kyle Hilles asked Elhakim if he thought it was rude for the woman to be on her phone so much while he was there.

Elhakim said no.

Hilles said Elhakim told defense attorney Tom Zena in Elhakim’s testimony that while she was on the phone, Elhakim gestured to the woman like “Should I go?” and Elhakim agreed he did.

Hilles asked if that meant Elhakim realized she might want him to leave.

“No,” Elhakim said.

“Then why would you ask to leave?”

Elhakim said he felt like “It’s late. She just put her son to bed and stuff. That’s when I (gestured) ‘Do you want me to go or?’ It wasn’t because she didn’t want me there, no.”

Hilles asked if Elhakim “initiated the sexual contact,” and Elhakim said, “Mutual.”

Hilles asked, “So I believe your testimony here today is that this encounter was completely consensual, correct?”

“Yes, counsel,” Elhakim said.

“You believe she wanted to have sex with you?”

“Yes, counsel.”

“Did she ever tell you she was uncomfortable?”

“No, counsel.”

“Did she ever explicitly consent to the sex acts?” Hilles asked.

“I don’t know,” Elhakim said.

“Did she ever say, ‘I want to have sex with you,'” Hilles asked.

“No,” he said.

Hilles asked if Elhakim saw all of the testimony earlier in the trial about the woman texting her friend to say “Hey, girl, I’m in trouble, I need help” and whether that indicated the woman was asking for help.

“I don’t know, counsel,” Elhakim said. He said he could not hear the phone conversation she had.

Hilles said, “So she is texting her friend to call police, but she didn’t give you any indicator that she didn’t want to have sex that night?”

“No counsel.”

Hilles asked if Elhakim had ever heard the expression “fight, flight or freeze” and that some people freeze when they are scared.

“Yes, counsel,” Elhakim said.

The woman’s testimony and text messages on Tuesday indicated that Elhakim arrived at 2:49 a.m. Her 2-year-old son was asleep in the house. Both of them said the early-morning meet-up was the most convenient time for them.

She and Elhakim went into the house and he “embraced me a bit longer,” she said. But because she did not show the same interest, he called her “cold because I was more reserved toward him,” she said.

They sat on the couch about five feet apart, and he asked her for lotion. But he tried to use it on her neck area and down onto her back “in the back of my dress,” she said.

She told him she did not want that. It made her “a little uncomfortable,” she said. Then on the couch, he kept moving “closer and closer to me.” She eventually “asked him to give me my personal space,” she said.

During cross examination of the woman Tuesday, defense attorney Tony Meranto and the woman looked at a printout of text messages between her and her friend and agreed that it was 4:09 a.m. the first time she texted her friend, saying “I’m in trouble.” She said she texted that in response to Elhakim “feeling all on me” and making her uncomfortable.

Meranto asked if after the wine spilled and Elhakim acted irritated, did Elhakim act “in any way physically threatening to you?”

She said he was not “threatening me. He intimidated me.”

Meranto asked “You’re intimidated in your mind, correct?”

“No. Not in my mind,” she said.

“Well, what did he do to intimidate you to that point?”

She said Elhakim was “touching on me and getting closer to me and he proceeded to tell me he didn’t mean to make me feel uncomfortable as he was continuing to touch me and rub me and feeling me,” she said.

“Why did you not tell (her girlfriend) at 4:09 a.m. to call the police?” Meranto asked.

She replied, “At this time I don’t want to make the situation greater by bringing police. I was just hoping he would leave,” she said.

Meranto asked why she didn’t make up a story like she was tired and ‘Let’s just do this another time.”

She said, “I told him someone was coming over,” she said.

“Why didn’t you just tell him ‘I’m tired. Why don’t you leave?” Meranto said.

“I was scared to ask him to leave,” she said.

The woman testified on Tuesday she is a nurse. Elhakim testified Wednesday he was in the Navy at age 17 for nine years and then returned home to the Farrell, Pa., area and got training as an airplane mechanic at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna. They first connected on dating app BLK, they said.