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“I was thinking that he wanted me dead… If I breathed really lightly and quietly, he would think that I was dead and everything would stop.”
The girl allegedly raped, strangled, and thrown off a bridge to die by a Worcester man took the stand during the man’s trial Monday, eight years after the alleged kidnapping.
Joshua Hubert is facing two counts of attempted murder along with charges of strangulation or suffocation, child kidnapping, aggravated rape of a child with force, and aggravated rape of a child, five-year age difference, according to the Worcester County District Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors allege that in 2017, Hubert kidnapped the 7-year-old child from her grandparents’ house in Worcester. He allegedly choked her with his hands, raped her, and placed a bag over her head and secured it with rope, according to court documents.
Hubert, a family friend, then allegedly stopped on a I-290 bridge in Shrewsbury and threw her into Lake Quinsigamond. The child, now 15, swam about 100 yards to shore and knocked on the door of a waterfront home at 4 a.m.
Hubert pleaded not guilty and has denied the allegations, according to court documents.
Hubert’s trial has been repeatedly delayed since 2020. Prosecutors began Monday with opening statements, MassLive reported. Court TV’s request to air the trial was denied, according to court records.
“Mr. Hubert has been waiting eight long years for his day in court,” his lawyer, Kevin Larson, told Boston.com. “We are looking forward to the truth finally coming out, and we fully expect an acquittal on all counts after the jury hears the facts in this case.”
‘He couldn’t hurt me anymore,’ girl said about falling into Lake Quinsigamond
The girl testified that, before the incident, Hubert was a guest at a birthday party at a Forestdale Road home in Worcester, according to MassLive. Hubert, her parents’ best friend, was a fixture at summer family gatherings.
Hours after the party, however, he allegedly took the girl, wearing pink princess onesie pajamas, from the living room recliner and drove away around 2:30 a.m., MassLive reported prosecutors said. He pulled over multiple times, and when he allegedly raped her, he strangled her and left bruises across her neck and body, according to the outlet.
The girl testified that she tried to kick him off of her, but then pretended to be dead when he allegedly tied the rope and plastic shopping bag around her head.
“I was thinking that he wanted me dead,” she testified, according to MassLive. “If I breathed really lightly and quietly, he would think that I was dead and everything would stop.”
She said she remembered being scared but “slightly relieved” when she landed in Lake Quinsigamond “because he couldn’t hurt me anymore,” she said on the stand, according to MassLive.
As a child, she didn’t understand what rape was, but told her cousin she was raped in 2022, according to MassLive. Lawyers are expected to address the sperm cells that were found on the girl’s underwear from the night of the incident, which didn’t match Hubert but instead matched her father.
The trial is expected to continue all week.
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