Due to their involvement in a sexual assault on a woman at a gathering in Hampden Township in March 2021, two males from Cumberland County will be sentenced to state prison.
After a jury trial in August, Taj Tucker, now 25, and Chase Toombs, now 23, were found guilty of felony sexual assault and conspiracy charges; but, jurors cleared both of the most serious charge against them, an additional count of rape.
The men were given minimum imprisonment sentences of three to six years by Judge Christylee Peck on Tuesday. When their prison terms are up, they will be placed on probation for an additional three years.
In response to defense lawyers’ requests for reduced sentences that would have let Toombs and Tucker to serve their time in county prison, Peck imposed the state time, citing the victim’s anguish and evidence from the trial that the men had plotted to conceal the crime after it had already happened.
The victim, who was 19 at the time of the assault, told police that she had received an invitation from a friend to attend the gathering at a house on Orrs Bridge Road and that she anticipated hanging out and enjoying some drinks with her coworkers.
She told authorities that she started to lose consciousness after drinking a few drinks.
She testified that when she woke up a while later, she was in the home’s bathroom with her pants down, Toombs—who she had worked with at a nearby fast-food restaurant at the time—forcing oral sex on her, and Tucker behind her attempting to engage in anal and vaginal sex without her permission.
The defendants eventually switched roles and carried on with the attack. As a result of their acts, the victim said that she was in a lot of agony and that she was bleeding from her mouth and vagina.
According to case files, she was taken to a hospital later that evening by a friend for a sexual assault examination, during which a nurse observed numerous injuries to the victim’s mouth and vaginal regions.
Police then carried out a search order on both Toombs’ and Tucker’s SnapChat accounts after the victim named them as her assailants.
According to the prosecution, detectives discovered correspondence between the two following the assault, in which they talked about lining up their stories and acknowledging that they had let the [Hennessy], a well-known brand of cognac, to take control that evening.
The woman claimed in a victim impact statement given to the court on Tuesday that she is forgiving of Toombs and Tucker even though she believes they still don’t fully accept responsibility for their conduct.
I hope the grief that led them to act in that way that evening and the days that followed goes away. “But I also hope that you give them as much time as possible so that after years of feeling like I was the only one paying for all of this, I can finally have peace of mind that they’ll receive a punishment,” she wrote.
Following Tuesday’s proceedings, Toombs and Tucker—who were both residents of Silver Spring Township when they were arrested in 2023—were committed to Cumberland County Prison, pending their eventual transfer to the state prison system.
They will serve their minimum sentences until December 2027.
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