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Healy man accused of raping girl, then hiding her in car trunk on dangerously cold night

Alaska Dispatch News - 1/10/2018

Jan. 10--A man is jailed on multiple sex charges after Alaska State Troopers say he raped, bit and slapped a 14-year-old girl, then hid her in the trunk of a car on a 20-below night, according to a criminal complaint filed in Fairbanks.

Spencer LaChappelle, 20 of Healy, is charged with three counts of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree. A friend of his also is charged with sexual abuse for what troopers say was a consensual sexual relationship with the same girl.

The girl's father reported to troopers that his daughter had been raped. She was interviewed at Stevie's Place, a child advocacy center in Fairbanks.

The encounter in Healy began around midnight Dec. 29 when the girl texted LaChappelle for a ride to a party, according to the complaint by Fairbanks-based trooper investigator Al Bell, with the Alaska Bureau of Investigation. She had known LaChappelle for years since they both grew up in the small community of Healy, just north of the entrance to Denali National Park and Preserve.

Troopers outline events this way in the complaint filed in Fairbanks court:

LaChappelle picked up the girl near her home in a small, dark car. He pulled over and raped and sodomized her, according to the complaint. He bit her genitals until she bled, the complaint said.

He only stopped when she screamed and cried aloud, the girl told the forensic interviewer at Stevie's Place.

LaChappelle then tried to continue driving, but his car got stuck in a snow berm. He became agitated and demanded oral sex, the complaint said.

The girl said he put his hands around her neck, the trooper wrote in the complaint. She said she tried to fight him and tried to get away, the complaint said.

LaChappelle called his father, Wayne LaChappelle, to pull his vehicle out of the snow.

Before his dad arrived, LaChappelle told the girl to get into the trunk because he didn't want "his dad to recognize how young she was," the trooper wrote in the complaint. A friend, Anthony "Tony" Timeche, 19, arrived as well. He had his own history with the girl, investigators said.

The men pulled the car from the berm. LaChappelle was drunk, so Timeche drove his car, the complaint said. The girl said she was yelling for them to let her out, but they kept her in the trunk "for quite a while," the complaint said. They dropped her off two driveways from home.

She suffered frostbite and hypothermia, the complaint said. That night, the temperature was minus 20 degrees.

A trooper contacted LaChappelle. He at first denied having sex with the girl, then said it was consensual, the complaint said. He said he never assaulted her.

The girl also told a sexual assault nurse examiner that she had been in a consensual sexual relationship with Timeche.

Because she is just 14 and at least four years younger than Timeche, troopers say the acts amount to a crime. Now Timeche is charged with three counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree.

Fairbanks District Attorney Gregg Olson said prosecutors will take the matter to a grand jury. Additional charges could result, he said in an email.

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(c)2018 the Alaska Dispatch News (Anchorage, Alaska)

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