South Florida Man Speaks Out About Brutal Rape
FORT LAUDERDALE (CBS4) -- A courageous South Florida man is speaking out about a brutal rape he hopes will never happen to anyone else.
"This is kind of hard," holding back tears Kevin Burns, 23, took us to the spot where he was violently raped. "He brought me over to the wires here and pushed me up on them and that's where he cut my belt and pants and ripped those and then with his bare hands ripped my underwear off."
Burns wanted to tell his terrifying story of rape and survival, hoping to help others. One moment he was walking on the sidewalk, the next, he was being raped at knifepoint.
"He put the knife up to my neck and he didn't say much about the knife, just let me know it was there," Kevin said.
It happened Friday night at 9 in the evening on busy Dixie highway and Northeast 19th street in Fort Lauderdale. Kevin said a man walked up, asked for a cigarette, then bashed him in the head with a rock. Moments later, he was shoved into some woods, choked with his own shirt, his clothes were cut off with a knife and he was being stabbed in the back with, what appeared to be a syringe.
"I just felt like a shot you'd get at the hospital and it went 5 or 6 times into my back over and over again," he explained to CBS 4's Ted Scouten. "When he was getting ready to leave, when he was calling me faggot, he said 'don't move or I'll inject.'"
During the attack, Kevin was cut, burned and bruised.
"I have the mark on my forehead from the rock,. I have the marks on my neck from the knife, and the marks on my forearms from falling and trying to get up and falling," Kevin explained.
He then lifted his shirt to show scratches all over his chest and stomach, he also showed a cigarette burn on his back. "My back, right here, is where I was burned."
Standing at the scene of the attack, Kevin described it as "a place where part of my soul was ripped out." "I don't know how else to put it, it was scary. I thought I was dead."
Fort Lauderdale police detectives are hoping to have a composite drawing of the rapist sometime later on in the week. If you have information, call Broward Crimestoppers at 954-493-TIPS.
