YOUNGSTOWN — The jury in the Keontae Thomas rape, kidnapping and aggravated robbery trial found Thomas guilty on all counts and specifications Wednesday in a verdict that left prosecutors happy that they had obtained justice for a woman who endured a number of challenges to get to that point.

The victim is a woman who posted an ad on an escort service app and arranged a meet-up with Thomas at her home for Nov. 26, 2022, but quickly found herself looking at a handgun pointed at her head and Thomas raping her multiple times and stealing her money.

Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Caitlyn Andrews said in opening statements in the trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that the victim intended to sell one sex act to Thomas, but when she asked him for the money, he raped her two times at gunpoint.

“Every person has a right to choose what sexual activities they will consent to. And that doesn’t go away simply because of your occupation,” Andrews said.

Assistant prosecutor Kyle Hilles said after the jury found Thomas guilty of two counts of rape, two counts of kidnapping and one count of aggravated robbery and gun specifications that the verdict means a lot.

“These kinds of cases are always really difficult, but we just wanted to get justice for this victim because of what she went through. For her to … testify, to go through the investigation, she was so strong. And to get this verdict is all the sweeter because of that. We are just so happy for her. We are just really pleased with the outcome.”

Andrews said this victim overcame a lot.

“This happened in 2022. So the fact that she stuck with it this long when it seemed like she didn’t have a lot of support, and she really stuck it out, did a lot of work for herself to get to this point,” she said.

“In the years since I have been doing this, it’s very, very, very common, especially when we get to the point of trial, people don’t want to put themselves through cross examination, the ridicule of going through all of this and especially with the circumstances of this case,” she said.

She said it is difficult for rape victims in general, but more so because of this victim’s occupation. “I understand why someone wouldn’t want to go through this. I think part of our hope on the grander scale would be that this will give some people some hope that if they do come forward there can be a good outcome and they can get justice.”

The victim testified that she did not report what happened to police right after it happened “because I’m doing wrong too,” selling herself and using drugs and thought she would “get in trouble too.”

She did report it to police Dec. 11, after Thomas arranged to meet up with the victim a second time that day, though she did not realize it was him until he was walking up to her front door in the same black shiny puffy coat, she testified.

The woman and a female friend chased him back out of the house, and she made a 911 call and reported what happened that day as well as on Nov. 26.

But after talking to a Youngstown patrolman and then to a detective, she says the detective never contacted her again, even after the woman reached out to the detective numerous times but still got no response, she said.

In 2025, a Youngstown detective pursued the case, leading to Thomas’ indictment Sept. 4, 2025. Thomas, 27, is of Youngstown. The victim said she was obsessed with identifying her assailant and finally did so through Facebook images.

The key piece of evidence in the case was video saved on a nanny cam that was running during the entirety of the attack. It showed the assailant holding a gun to the victim’s head as he raped her. And it also showed him walking into her home after he first arrived, proceeding to her bathroom, walking back into her living room and the woman performing a sex act on him as they had agreed in advance.

It also showed him forcing her into the bedroom area and then leaving the home. In many instances, the man’s face was clearly visible.

“I think the video was kind of the central point of this case, especially when we only had two witnesses,” Andrews said. “Just going off of a victim’s testimony is hard for people sometimes,” Andrews said. The other state witness was Youngstown police detective Michael Cox, who had only begun his work in the case last week.

Andrews said it helped that the jurors could “break it down (the video) frame by frame and analyze it for themselves and not just go off of what we presented them with or what the defense did. They were actually able to go through the video.”

Andrews said she believed the video was clear enough for the jurors to use it to identify Thomas as the man committing the crimes.

“I said watch the video for yourselves, pause it. Go frame by frame. Take that all into account,” Hilles said. “And I mentioned it in jury selection. Sometimes we only have one witness. And in cases like this, it’s very common we only have one witness.

“So watch the video. Listen to what the victim told you and see that video corroborates her story. And I believe that it did,” including as a means of identifying Thomas as the assailant, Hilles said.

Also visible in the video was Thomas’ hands, which have distinctive tattoos on them. Cox presented still images from the video during the trial that he enhanced to bring out more detail in the assailant’s hands, suggesting that the assailant had tattoos on the back of his hands like the ones on Thomas’ hands.

No sentencing date for Thomas is in court records yet. Thomas could get about 50 years in prison on his five first-degree felony convictions. He also was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm, a lower-level felony.

In closing arguments in the trial, defense attorney Frank Cassese said he agrees that a sex worker can be a rape victim. And he has “no doubt the video we watched was a video of a young woman getting raped.”

But he said convicting the wrong man is not the right thing to do. He said prosecutors talked about how the victim deserves the same protections as any other person.

“But that same thing goes for somebody standing trial. Those same protections should be afforded to a 27-year-old male who is sitting accused of such serious crimes,” Cassese said.

The victim should not be punished for the Youngstown Police Department’s “lack of an investigation. Well, neither should he,” Cassese said of Thomas. He said jurors should not convict Thomas because “law enforcement didn’t do their job.”

Cassese then asked the jury to consider the fact that the victim never mentioned that the assailant had tattoos on his neck and hands, even though the assailant’s hands were not covered the first time he was there, and he was not wearing a mask covering his neck the second time he went there.