A man found guilty of the knife rape of a 14-year-old girl walking to school in Reading has been sentenced to 28½ to 60 years in state prison.
Sean Samuels, 40, whose last known residence was in Auburn, Schuylkill County, but most recently had no permanent address, was convicted last June during a trial before Berks County Judge Eleni Dimitriou Geishhauser.
A jury found him guilty of charges of rape, aggravated indecent assault and related crimes in the March 2022 sexual assault.
Samuels was sentenced Thursday.
Samuels was considered a sexually violent predator and will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
His sentence was also increased because it is his third conviction for a violent crime, prosecutors said.
He had been in the Berks County Jail since his arrest.
The police gave this account:
Shortly before 8 a.m. on March 16, 2022, Samuels confronted the girl in the 1200 block of Hill Road as she walked to her school, which investigators did not identify.
Samuels ran toward her, grabbed her arm and told her not to run.
The victim did not know Samuels, but he told her to come with him. She tried to flag down a car but he told her not to do that as he threatened her with a knife.
When she resisted, he told her to stop or he would kill her. He raped her, took her cell phone and sweatshirt and left.
The victim ran home and told his mother what happened. Her mother called the police.
At the crime scene, investigators found items that supported the victim’s account and fingerprints they determined to be Samuels’.
Video surveillance footage showed Samuels leaving the premises and asking a security guard to use the guard’s cell phone to make a call.
Police also released surveillance photos to the public to help identify Samuels. He was detained in Hamburg on March 21, 2022, five days after the attack.
Following his arrest, police and city officials released statements praising police for ending the threat Samuels posed and for resolving a horrendous incident that disrupted the community.
