After the first time, the pain of the knife slicing into his thigh started to numb.
He did not know his attackers, only that four men who spoke English and another language he did not recognize forced him and his friend into a small sedan. A Saturn.
As the duo was driven to ATMs to withdraw cash in the Antioch area before sunrise in March 2012, they were repeatedly punched, stabbed and taunted. Laughed at. It lasted about 45 minutes.
They were forced to give each other oral sex. Forced to strip off their bloody clothes, told to get out of the car and pushed down on a road before their attackers fled.
After a week-long trial, a jury on Friday found one of the four attackers, Peterpal Tutlam, 31, guilty of six charges against him: two counts each of especially aggravated robbery, especially aggravated kidnapping and aggravated rape.
The verdict marks a step toward justice for the victims.
It does not mark the end of the impact from what one victim described as torture in the backseat of that car.
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The two victims, both 24 at the time, had been friends since 8th grade. The Tennessean is not naming them because they are victims of rape.
In March 2012, one of the men was working two jobs, was engaged to be married and had a young daughter.
The girl gave him things, often a small pebble, to carry with him as a reminder of her.
The one in his pocket on March 17, 2012 ended up in a police evidence photograph.
This evidence photograph, submitted during the rape and kidnapping trial of Peterpal Tutlam, shows a small pebble mixed among change from one victim’s pocket. The jury convicted Tutlam of stabbing and beating the victim, who testified he carried the pebble as a reminder of his young daughter.
The man and his friend were killing time early that day waiting for The Tennessean newspapers to be ready for delivery, which was the job of one of the men. They went to wait at one of their homes at Hickory Trace apartments on Hickory Hollow Place.
“These two young men were doing the right thing while the defendant and his family were plotting,” Assistant District Attorney Megan King said during the closing arguments of Tutlam’s trial on Thursday.
About three miles away, four men were leaving Caribbean Hut club on Antioch Pike. They’d spent hours drinking and dancing.
“I told my little brother I’m trying to rob someone tonight,” Duol Wal testified during trial on Thursday. Wal previously pleaded guilty in the attack.
Wal said he told his brother, who has also pleaded guilty, that his pockets were (continue reading at The Tennessean)