Staff photos / Ed Runyan Testimony began Tuesday in the trial of Keontae Thomas in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. He is charged with rape, kidnapping and aggravated robbery.

YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Caitlyn Andrews said in her opening statements in the Keontae A. Thomas rape, kidnapping and aggravated robbery trial, “Every person in society is protected by law.

“It does not matter who you are. It does not matter what decisions you have made in your life. It does not matter what your occupation is,” she said. “You are protected under the law. 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 on Nov. 25, 2022, the victim in this case got a message from Thomas, 27, who was responding to an advertisement she posted on a website called Skip The Games, a website used for escorts.

“In their messages they discussed meeting up to engage in consensual sexual activity together,” Andrews said.

Thomas went to her house just after midnight Nov. 26. He came into the house, and she put on music and engaged him in a sex act, Andrews said. The woman brought up the issue of money, and the man started reaching in his coat pocket, she said.

“He pulls a gun out of his pocket and points it directly at her. She backs up … and just goes into survival mode,” Andrews said. “He pointed a gun to her temple and forced her to perform another sex act and then engaged her in sex while still pointing the gun at her. Then he guided her to her bedroom and ordered her to give him money and left.”.

What neither of them knew is that the woman had accidentally left on the baby monitor in the living room, and it captured everything, Andrews said.

The trial resumes Wednesday morning in the courtroom of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Maureen Sweeney.

The two counts of rape, two counts of kidnapping and one count of aggravated robbery Thomas faces all contain specifications that Thomas committed the crimes while using a firearm.

Defense attorney Frank Cassese said the prosecution “better bring credible evidence in order to gain a conviction, not assumptions, not speculation and not a hunch.”

He said the evidence is that the woman called 911 on Dec. 21, 2022, about an assailant who came to her house and told a Youngstown patrolman and a detective and gave them a description of the man — skin color, weight, mask that partially covered his face — but neither time did she describe the man as having tattoos on the back of his hands. It was the second time the man came to her house, the alleged victim testified later Tuesday.

ALLEGED VICTIM

The alleged victim was the first witness. Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Kyle Hilles asked her about the Skip The Games website. She said it involves another person contacting her and the two of them discussing what the person wants and how much it will cost, which in this case was $80. There was a phone number associated with the suspect, she said.

On the night he came to her house, Nov. 26, 2022, he got out of a white SUV and was wearing a shiny black bubble coat with an emblem on it and gray sweatpants. He had on a ski type mask that leaves an oval area of the person’s face exposed but not the person’s hair or neck.

After the first sex act, she asked for money, and he was “fidgeting and stuff,” which “made me nervous, and then I backed up and said ‘Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Like what’s happening? People’s weird nowadays. I said you’re not weird. but people are weird.” And then he pulled out the gun, she said.

She said she saw the gun, and she was scared but complied with what he told her.

“He raped me and still had the gun in his hand pointed at me,” she said.

He took her money and left.

She said she did not report the incident that day “because I’m doing wrong too,” like doing drugs and selling herself and thought she would “get in trouble too,” she said.

She said she tried to find the identity of the person who raped her on the internet and found him on Facebook. She said she saw the hand tattoos on the man.

On Dec. 11, 2022, a man reached out to her on Skip The Games and FaceTimed the man. She did not recognize him or see what he was wearing because he was in a dark car, she said. It was the same man who raped her several weeks earlier, but she did not know it was him until he started walking up her steps to her house fast, she said.

She tried to swing the door shut because she recognized the coat from the first incident, but he pushed the door open. He asked if anyone else was in the house and she said no, but there was. It was a female friend. The man ran back out of the house.

She called the police after that incident. She told police about what happened that night and what happened in November. She said she did not tell the police officer that she was a sex worker because she was “doing wrong.”

She spoke with a detective, but the detective never called back, even after she called the detective many times. In 2025, she met with a different detective, she said. There also was a third detective who worked on the case more recently, according to testimony.