After years of delay, a Chester man is on trial for a three-year spree of rapes and sexual assaults

As the trial began Monday for a Chester man charged in a series of rapes and sexual assaults, two women who said he attacked them took the witness stand to relive the horror they said they experienced at his hands.

“I was just thinking ‘I’m about to die’ as it was happening,’” one woman said, describing how she tried to scream as DeJohn Lee choked her so hard the blood vessels in her eyes burst.

That woman later identified Lee, 27, as her attacker after she saw him in a nearby ShopRite store.

Lee was arrested in the store in January 2017 for carrying an illegal gun, and was charged months later with multiple counts of rape, attempted rape, aggravated assault, and related crimes after investigators connected him with nine assaults in Chester that occurred between July 2014 and his arrest.

Four of those cases went to trial before Delaware County Court Judge James Bradley.

Lee targeted the women within a few-block radius of his apartment in Chester, Deputy District Attorney Kristen Kemp said Monday. He carried out the attacks in a similar pattern, she said: He waited until the women were walking alone either late at night or early in the morning, dragged them into secluded areas, and robbed and raped them.

In some of the cases, Lee threatened to kill the women if they called the police, telling them he had a gun, according to testimony Monday.

One of the women who took the stand Monday said Lee pressed a gun into her back to reinforce that threat. The other said Lee hit her in the head with the weapon so hard that she temporarily lost her vision.

In the years since Lee’s arrest, his attorney Sherri Eyer contended that he was incompetent to stand trial, citing expert analysis and psychiatric reports. Bradley agreed in January 2022 and sent Lee to Norristown State Hospital for treatment.

But the judge reversed his decision last week after Eyer and her cocounsel, Scott Galloway, said they had been able to communicate with him about his case.

Prosecutors have said Lee confessed to five of the nine assaults with which he is charged, and DNA evidence from a rape kit connected him to one of the assaults.

Lee denied involvement in the assault against the woman who later identified him at the ShopRite. The Inquirer is withholding the woman’s name because it does not identify victims of alleged sexual assault without their consent.

Eyer and Galloway questioned the two women’s credibility Monday, pointing out inconsistencies between their initial statements to police seven years ago and their testimony in court.

One of the women said Monday that Lee asked her for the time as she walked toward her home at the Dorian Court Apartments in Chester in December 2016. After she responded and turned to walk away, she said, Lee pushed her to the ground, silencing her screams by telling her he would kill her if she didn’t stop.

She said he took her to a nearby playground, where he forced her to perform a sex act and then raped her.

“I was just thinking about my family,” she said. “I was praying to God, hoping that I could live to see another day.”

The woman said she got a clear look at Lee’s face during the assault and later identified him in a police photo array.

A week before that incident, Lee attacked the other woman who testified Monday, pulling her hood over her eyes as she walked home near Fifth Street in Chester, she said. He dragged her to nearby train tracks before robbing her of $200 and sexually assaulting her, she said.

The woman told prosecutors she recognized Lee when she saw him weeks later: The two had once worked together, and she had gone to school with his extended family.

Initially, she was hesitant to contact police, she said, because she feared retaliation. But her cousin persuaded her to speak up.

“I was tired of seeing him,” she said. “He was out walking around the street. He could’ve done this to somebody else.”