Police say soldier's husband stabbed, raped her

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EL PASO — A Fort Bliss soldier's husband kicked her in the face, stabbed her and raped her before abducting her from her off-post apartment last week and taking her to Las Vegas, police said Monday.

The soldier, who turned up wounded but alive in El Paso on Sunday night, was attacked as she entered her apartment about 5:15 p.m. Thursday, police said in an affidavit charging Clinton W. Lewis, 34, with aggravated kidnapping.

The soldier, a mother of three, was reported missing Friday after failing to show up for work at Fort Bliss. When soldiers from her unit found her apartment locked and no one apparently inside, they called police.

Officers found evidence of a struggle, including bloody clothes and washcloths. They also found an empty roll of duct tape, said El Paso police Officer Chris Mears.

The Associated Press has previously identified the 29-year-old soldier but is no longer naming her because of the sexual assault allegations. The AP does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault without their consent.

Lewis turned himself in to El Paso police Sunday night. He is being held in the El Paso County jail on $75,000 bail. Jail records do not show whether he has a lawyer, but he was scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.

A police request for an emergency protective order barring Lewis from contacting his wife or being within 200 yards of her was denied overnight. Municipal Judge John Needham said instead that if Lewis is released on bond, he is to have no contact with his wife or children.

The police affidavit says Lewis was waiting inside the soldier's apartment and kicked her in the face as she walked through the door. The private first class was stabbed with a kitchen knife, threatened with death, then raped, investigators allege.

Investigators said Lewis then drove the soldier more than 720 miles to Las Vegas and apparently boarded an El Paso-bound bus sometime Saturday.

Lewis is wanted in Tennessee on suspicion of not paying child support and has a decade-long criminal history that includes several arrests for assault and domestic assault.

Mears said the soldier persuaded Lewis to take her back to El Paso from Las Vegas. When they arrived at a downtown bus station, they saw news reports of the case and went to a police station, Mears said.

Delores Pigeon, the women's grandmother, said the soldier called relatives early Monday to say her husband kidnapped her, drove her to Nevada and then came back to El Paso to turn himself in.

"She said she's in shock," Pigeon said. "She's got two big holes in her legs, and she lost of a lot of blood."

Army officials at William Beaumont Army Medical Center, the Fort Bliss hospital, said the soldier had been treated and released.

The woman was planning to leave her husband of two years, said her sister, Tammy Skelton. The soldier sent Skelton a series of text messages saying that Lewis had left and had even sent a picture that looked like it was taken from inside a Greyhound bus.

"She left him an envelope with money and a note telling him to leave and not to come back," Skelton said. "She was so happy, saying he's 400 miles away."

By Wednesday afternoon, Skelton said, her sister believed Lewis was gone for good and started making plans to go back to her apartment and start over without him.

"Hey sis he's gone so when my check comes I'm going to buy a futon," the soldier wrote in the text message Wednesday, Skelton said. "Yeah, he's gone. Had police go with me yesterday, it's all clear."

She was last heard from in a text message at 4:56 p.m.

Skelton said her sister joined the Army last year to get away from her husband and start a new life with her children.

The children have been living in Tennessee with the soldier's mother. She planned to move the children to Texas once she got a place to live in Fort Bliss.

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