Grandmother Of Sexual Assault Victim Says Window Locks Went Unrepaired

The sexual assault of a 10-year-old girl in a bedroom of an Oxon Hill apartment has left her family and neighbors shaken and looking for answers. 

Family members say the intruder entered through a window of her grandmother’s street-level apartment in the Carlyle at Harbor Pointe complex. The grandmother won’t give her name in order to protect her granddaughter’s privacy, but there is one important thing she repeats over and over as she recounts the incident.

"We didn’t leave the windows open. The window didn’t have locks. So all he had to do was slide the window open to get in," the girl's grandmother says. She says she complained to management for three months, and asked to have the locks repaired, but no one responded.

"And I thought by me being here, I would be her security," says the grandmother, through tears. "But I wasn’t able to do that. 

If those windows had locks, they would have been locked," she continues. "We’re on the bottom floor, I would have made sure those widows were locked." 

Mirta Mina, vice president of operations for Harbor Point says they were unaware of the broken window locks. "We looked at the records since she moved in, back in March, and we didn’t have any record of that," Mina says. "We had records of other things in her apartment that were repaired, but not that.”

Meanwhile, the grandmother says her granddaughter is recovering, but is withdrawn and won’t talk much. The girl’s mother, who lives in another town, is angry.

"My daughter’s not good at all," says the mother, sobbing. "She’s not talking to no one. She don’t want to be bothered with nobody ... oh God."

The building’s management has agreed to relocate the grandmother to a fully renovated apartment at her current rent, in a different location. They’re also offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and indictment of the suspect.