Masked Man Raped Neighbor At Knifepoint, Offered To Make Up With Housework

A Florida man was sentenced Monday to 50 years in prison for raping his neighbor and then offering to do some house work for her to make up for it.

Timothy Walding, 20, broke into his 35-year-old neighbor’s house through the front door in October 2017 and entered the master bedroom wearing a mask. He then tied her up and threatened her with a knife before raping her. After the act, Walding, who was 18 years old at the time, let the woman get dressed, told her she knew him and eventually took off his mask to confirm his identity that she had guessed, a Palm Beach County courtroom heard Monday.

According to the court documents, Walding told the woman he had picked her lock with a fish hook and remarked, “You really should deadbolt your door because I didn’t really want to do this but I had to do it.” When asked the reason for the act, Walding, then 18, told her “Obviously it wasn't a spontaneous thing and I had this plan,” the Sun Sentinel reported.

Walding also told the woman, a mother of two children, that he could do yard work or fixing something in the home in order to make up for it. The woman, however, turned him down after which he asked her to “shake hands so he knows she was not going to say anything to anyone about this,” to which she agreed. She called 911 soon after Walding left, Buzz Feed News reported.

Walding was taken into custody but he declined to give a statement after the arrest. During his last trial in October 2018, Walding told the court it had been a consensual encounter.

On Monday, Walding was found guilty of “sexual battery with a deadly weapon, false imprisonment while in possession of a weapon, and burglary with assault” and sentenced to 50 years imprisonment.

In a similar incident in 2017, a Texas man broke into his neighbor’s house and raped her in front of her children. The accused, 42-year-old Bryce Scott, broke into his neighbor’s home and asked her to strip before sexually assaulting her. He then fled the block naked after the victim managed to sneak her phone to her 12-year-old daughter to call the police. He was taken into custody a few hours later, the Weekly Challenger reported.