Whitebear
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Black raped and strangled an 11-year-old black girl
Alex Demolle
Jaquita Mack
Alex Demolle
Jaquita Mack
OAKLAND -- An Alameda County jury heard conflicting accounts today as to whether an Oakland man raped and strangled an 11-year-old girl before dumping her body in a field eight years ago.
Deputy District Attorney John Brouhard told jurors that Alex Demolle, 32, brutally killed Jaquita Mack in Oakland's Fruitvale District on July 23, 1999, before using his next-door neighbor's car to drive her body to a weedy field, where it was found the next day.
"Jaquita left her home that night to escape ugliness," Brouhard told a jury of six men and six women in his opening statement in the death-penalty trial in Oakland, referring to drug use and prostitution at her parents' home.
But when she went outside to ride her bike, "She was confronted with complete and utter terror," Brouhard said. "He fondled her, he raped her, he sexually violated her little body. When he was done, he sat on her legs, put his big hands on her neck and literally squeezed the life out of her."
Jaquita died with her eyes open, the prosecutor said.
Demolle has been charged with murder with the special circumstances of rape and lewd acts with a child. If convicted, he could be sentenced to death by lethal injection.
Jaquita, who had dreams of becoming president of the United States and sang in her church choir, would have entered the sixth grade at Schilling Elementary School in Newark, where she lived with an aunt. She died about a month before she would have turned 12.
An uncle last saw Jaquita riding her bike with pink pedals and green handlebars near the B&W Market on the corner of Fruitvale Avenue and East 27th Street.
While the prosecution addressed the jury for an hour and a half, defense attorney James Giller -- whose co-counsel is well-known criminal defense attorney Daniel Horowitz -- took just several minutes to deliver his opening remarks. "Wait until you hear all of the evidence in this case," he urged jurors.
Giller said the defense would concede that DNA evidence pointed to Demolle, but said prosecutors would be trying to show that the defendant committed sodomy when there was no evidence of that.
In court today, Brouhard showed jurors a picture of a smiling Jaquita. He later contrasted that image with pictures of her body in a field off Ransom Avenue in East Oakland, about 15 blocks away, and those from her autopsy. Relatives in the front row wept as the pictures appeared on a large screen in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Larry Goodman.
Demolle showed no emotion.
Demolle's home in a seven-unit brick-and-stucco building was next-door to the market and was within sight of Jaquita's father's home, where she had been staying for the summer.
Jaquita did not know Demolle, but he may have seen her riding her bike in the neighborhood, family members have said.
Demolle, a former office-supply warehouse worker, was unemployed at the time of his arrest.
He has no convictions, but Demolle was arrested in December 1993 for allegedly trying to break into a car on West MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland. His prosecution was deferred for a year pending no further arrests and his completion of 40 hours of community service at a Boys and Girls Club. He performed the service, and the case did not appear on his criminal record.
Demolle's next-door neighbor Delores Hill told The Chronicle at the time that Demolle pounded on her door the night Jaquita disappeared, his eyes wide with panic. He pleaded with her to let him borrow her car to visit a sick aunt. He took Hill's 1984 Buick Regal and returned it 20 minutes later, she said.
Hill said Demolle denied any involvement in Jaquita's death after he was first interviewed by police. Demolle told Hill that he was concerned about his own 3-year-old daughter's safety and vowed to find Jaquita's killer himself.
But police said Demolle gave conflicting statements during a series of interviews. At first, he said he had not seen Jaquita. But he later said that he helped Jaquita up after she fell from her bike, authorities said. Two witnesses also saw Demolle with the girl, according to police.
Hill later told police that Demolle had told her that it couldn't have been him, commenting that it takes 20 minutes to strangle someone, Brouhard said.
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