SALT LAKE CITY — A man has been charged with two counts of rape of a child after an investigation that began when a teenage girl was admitted to a hospital and discovered to be pregnant last year.
According to charging documents filed Wednesday, 52-year-old William Piol Makuei allegedly raped a young girl on several occasions, which resulted in a pregnancy.
The teen victim was admitted to University of Utah Hospital in June of 2016, where she was found to be 29 weeks pregnant. The girl was 14 when admitted to the hospital but 13 when she became pregnant.
Investigators began interviewing the victim and her family, and the girl told police she had sex several times in 2015 with a man named William. She said the man was from Sudan and lived in the same refugee community as the teen and her family.
The victim said on one occasion the man gave her something to drink, and she fell asleep. When she awoke she was nude and was bleeding from her “front part”, according to charging documents.
The teen said on another occasion the man picked her up in his vehicle as she walked home from a market and threatened her, saying “something bad would happen” to her family if she did not do as he said. He then took her to another home and had sex with her.
Police identified Makuei as a suspect based on the victim’s description, and earlier this month they obtained a DNA sample from the man by collecting a discarded cigarette butt. That sample was taken to a lab, which confirmed Makuei was a match to be the father of the victim’s child, the charging documents state.
Prosecutors have requested that the man be held without bail, stating he poses a “substantial flight risk and a risk of danger to the community.” He has been charged with two counts of rape of a child, which are first-degree felonies.
