No. Libs. teen sentenced in brutal rapes

A Northern Liberties teen who was convicted of raping a woman and sexually assaulting another was sentenced today to 20 to 45 years in prison, to be followed by five years' probation.

Derrick Cook, 17, said nothing during his sentencing hearing, which included testimony from one of his victims, a former neighbor who sometimes asked Cook to do odd jobs.

Cook was 15 years old in August 2008 when he grabbed a 23-year-old woman on Orkney Street near Poplar and dragged her into an alley, where he repeatedly raped her and smashed her head against rocks, the prosecutor said.

He made the woman tell him that she loved him and took pictures of her naked body with her cell phone.

In November 2008 he went to home of his second victim, a 45-year-old woman and neighbor, and told her that he was locked out of his house. She let him in, gave him Tylenol and water and let him use her phone.

When she turned around, he stabbed her, smashed her face into the ground, forced her to perform oral sex, then left her to die.

"This is a form of murder," said Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner, who rejected the prosecutor's request for a sentence of 80-160 years in prison.

"The two victims in this case have died in some degree or another . . . The only difference between a true murder case and a case like this is that we can hope and pray for some revival, some healing, as long as there's breath in these women's bodies."