Irate Father Attacks Trio Who Sexually Abused Girl

A father enraged by the abduction and sexual abuse of his 14-year-old daughter stormed into a house with a rifle and hunting knife to confront three people suspected in the case, police say.

The man threatened to kill one of the three and slammed another with the rifle butt, police said.

Police investigators, who happened to be outside the house Thursday preparing information for a search warrant, rushed in and arrested all four people.

The girl told police earlier that a man and two women held her captive for nine days in a house where she was repeatedly raped and sodomized. She said the three were trying to force her into prostitution.

“I don’t want to come across as innocent,” the father said today in a tearful interview with the Rochester Times-Union. “You’ve got to put me in a corner, but I swear to Jesus I would have killed him--as a father.”

Police said they agreed not to release the father’s name in order to protect his daughter’s confidentiality.

Officials said the father was wearing a bulletproof vest and was armed with a .223-caliber semi-automatic military carbine, 90 rounds of ammunition and a hunting knife.

“He said, ‘All I did was what a father has to do,’ ” the girl’s stepmother, who is estranged from the father, said in an interview with the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

The man was charged with third-degree assault and menacing, both misdemeanors. He was freed Thursday on $500 bail and pleaded innocent today at his arraignment. A city judge reduced bail to $100.

“This is not a vigilante case,” police Capt. James O’Brien said. “It is a case of a man acting irrationally in response to an irrational act.

“I’m past the point of sympathy for the man. I empathize with him,” O’Brien said.

Kifaru Simone “B. J.” Taylor, 35; Tammy Taylor, 17, no relation, and Paula Banker, 20, pleaded innocent today and were ordered held without bail pending another City Court appearance next week. Each was charged with kidnaping, unlawful imprisonment, rape, sodomy, assault and promotion of prostitution, police said.