Derrick Rose co-defendant testifies in civil rape trial that sex was consensual
A dramatic day in the federal civil rape trial for NBA star Derrick Rose on Wednesday saw the player’s two friends give lurid testimony about having sex with the accuser, news that an LAPD detective investigating the allegations was dead and the judge deciding against halting the trial over the sudden appearance of texts the accuser traded with Rose the night of the alleged assault.
The testimony centered on the night the accuser and a friend visited the Beverly Hills home Rose had rented in summer 2013 and the hours after when she claims she was raped, while drugged and drunk, by all three men while incapacitated in her Los Angeles apartment.
Both of Rose’s childhood friends, Ryan Allen and Randall Hampton, whom he has since hired to work for him, denied the allegations and testified that all three had consensual sex with the plaintiff in Rose’s home and her apartment.
“I couldn’t wait to come in and testify,” Allen said from the stand. “She was well aware of everything that took place.”
The Times in most cases does not name alleged victims of sexual assault.
Allen and Hampton testified that once the plaintiff and her friend arrived at the rental home, the group went to the backyard and took two or three shots of tequila by a fire pit.
Hampton testified he had sex with the plaintiff by the cabana and at one point Rose joined in.
Allen told the jury that sometime during the evening he found the plaintiff’s friend trying to seduce Rose in his bedroom.
According to Allen, the friend had walked in and disrobed. Rose, he said, was lying on his bed ignoring her while watching the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” on television. Allen testified that he peeked his head in to check on Rose.
“Poo, you want her in here?” Allen said he asked Rose, calling him by his childhood nickname.
“No,” Rose replied without looking away from the TV, according to Allen.
Allen said he escorted the woman out and asked why she had come to the home, he said. She couldn’t answer and said that she’d only met the plaintiff, who brought her to the home, earlier that day on Facebook, he said.
“That’s when I thought there was a problem. I don’t think this is a good situation,” Allen testified.
With Rose’s permission, he said, he called a cab for the plaintiff and the other woman and asked them to leave.
As the women waited for the cab, Allen testified, he had sex with the plaintiff.
The plaintiff, a former girlfriend of Rose’s, claims she was slipped a date-rape drug at the home and had only flashes of memory of her journey back to her apartment after 11:45 p.m.
Attorneys representing Rose and the other two defendants introduced records of phone calls and texts Wednesday that showed her exchanging messages with Rose until after 2 a.m.
Rose appeared to want her to come back to Beverly Hills. Allen said the woman agreed the group could come over if Rose was included.
Hampton and Allen testified that when they arrived with Rose at the woman’s apartment north of USC and called her, she answered and walked them in.
The men have not been charged criminally. Los Angeles police officials have said they are continuing to investigate the incident, which the woman reported in 2015.
In a grim twist on Wednesday, authorities said one of the LAPD’s lead investigators on the case, Det. Nadine Hernandez, was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at a home in Whittier. The Police Department said there was no indication that the death was connected to her work and that the inquiry into Rose — who plays for the New York Knicks — and his friends would continue.
The plaintiff looked shocked when news of the detective’s death was mentioned in court early Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald rebuked the plaintiff’s attorneys over claims that they withheld from the defense three text messages the woman sent to Rose around the time of the alleged assault.
One of the woman’s lawyers, Brandon Anand, told the judge that it was a simple mistake that the texts weren’t provided sooner.
“There was no attempt to keep anything hidden,” he said.
Rose’s lawyer, Mark Baute, had said he found the previously unseen texts Friday in documents the plaintiff’s side belatedly shared.
The three texts, he said, show that the woman willingly went along with a request from Rose that she and a friend come to his house for sex. In one of the messages, sent after the two women had left Rose’s house, the plaintiff reproached Rose for refusing to have sex with her friend after she went to the trouble of arranging the rendezvous.
The judge said that the messages “could be viewed as favorable to the defense” but that the failure was not serious enough to declare a mistrial. Fitzgerald said Rose’s lawyers could still question the plaintiff about them.
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The 30-year-old woman previously testified in the trial that she passed out in her bed after leaving Rose’s rented home and awoke to find him and the other men in her room assaulting her. Her lawsuit seeks $21 million.
Rose, 28, denied the woman’s allegations, portraying her as the aggressor throughout the night. He testified she agreed to have the three men come to her apartment, let them in and willingly had sex with each of them in turn.
For more Southern California news, follow us on Twitter: @JosephSerna and @joelrubin
Times staff writers Richard Winton and Hailey Branson-Potts contributed to this report.
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UPDATES:
9:10 p.m.: This article has been updated throughout with additional details.
2:20 p.m.: This article was updated with testimony from defendant Randall Hampton and toxicology expert Ernest Lykissa.
10:55 a.m.: This article was updated with a statement by Whittier police that the detective’s death is being investigated as a suicide.
9:55 a.m.: This article was updated with the death of the LAPD detective investigating the rape allegations against Derrick Rose.
9:10 a.m.: This article was updated with the judge’s decision and comments by lawyers in the courtroom.
This article was originally published at 7:55 a.m.
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