Soldier’s husband held in wife’s stabbing, rape

EL PASO, Texas -- A Fort Bliss soldier's husband kicked her in the face, stabbed her and raped her before abducting her from her off-post apartment last week and taking her to Las Vegas, police said Monday.

The soldier, who turned up wounded but alive in El Paso on Sunday night, was attacked as she entered her apartment about 5:15 p.m. Thursday, police said in an affidavit charging Clinton W. Lewis, 34, with aggravated kidnapping.

The soldier, a mother of three, was reported missing Friday after failing to show up for work at Fort Bliss. When soldiers from her unit found her apartment locked and no one apparently inside, they called police.

Officers found evidence of a struggle, including bloody clothes and washcloths. They also found an empty roll of duct tape, said El Paso police Officer Chris Mears.

Lewis surrendered El Paso police Sunday night. He is being held in the El Paso County jail on $75,000 bail. Jail records do not show whether he has a lawyer, but he was scheduled to be arraigned today.

A police request for an emergency protective order barring Lewis from contacting his wife or being within 200 yards of her was denied overnight. Municipal Judge John Needham said instead that if Lewis is released on bond, he is to have no contact with his wife or children.

The police affidavit says Lewis was waiting inside the soldier's apartment and kicked her in the face as she walked through the door. The private first class was stabbed with a kitchen knife, threatened with death, then raped, investigators allege.

Investigators said Lewis then drove the soldier more than 720 miles to Las Vegas and boarded an El Paso-bound bus sometime Saturday.

Las Vegas police were not involved in the investigation, but they did impound the couple's vehicle, which was found abandoned Sunday near the Greyhound bus station in downtown Las Vegas, officer Jacinto Rivera said.

Las Vegas police are keeping the vehicle for El Paso authorities. Lewis is wanted in Tennessee on suspicion of not paying child support and has a decade-long criminal history, including several arrests for assault and domestic assault.

Army officials at William Beaumont Army Medical Center, the Fort Bliss hospital, said the soldier had been treated and released.

The woman was planning to leave her husband of two years, her sister said. The sister said the victim had joined the Army last year to get away from her husband and start a new life with her children.

The children have been living in Tennessee with their maternal grandmother.