Mankato convicted rapist tries to walk out of the courtroom during sentencing

Victim confronts rapist in court

A woman who was sexually assaulted as a child in Mankato, Minn. confronted her attacker in court on Monday, letting him know how his actions affected her life.

MANKATO, Minn. (FOX 9) - The man convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Mankato was sentenced to prison on Monday, nearly 10 years after the attack.

Cold case arrest

The backstory:

Lazarous Lazaro Thomas, 28, was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual assault for the attack that happened in September 2015.

Thomas wasn't arrested in the case until eight years after the attack, when there was a DNA match in 2023.

He was accused of breaking in through the girl's bedroom window, crawling on top of her, and threatening to kill her if she screamed.

What we know:

In court on Monday, the judge handed down a 30-year sentence for Thomas, who will get credit for nearly two years of time served in jail.

Victim shares her story

The other side:

Last week, the victim, Chloe Taber, spoke with FOX 9, talking about how the attack had scarred her.

"I struggled a lot with doing not so safe things. I ended up getting pregnant at 15. It's another one that I thought was a really weird symptom of it, or sign or whatever, is you would think after being raped that sex and those kind of things would be something that you would want nothing to do with. And I came to find out as I got older that that's not the case. Sometimes they become like victims and survivors become like hypersexual or do things not so safely, which I thought I was crazy for. But I came to find it's more common than we realize. But I did become pregnant at 15. I have a beautiful 8-year-old. She basically saved my life after the fact."

Rape victim speaks out ahead of sentencing

Chloe Taber, 24, is sharing her survival story 10 years after being sexually assaulted by a stranger who had broken in through her bedroom window. Eight years after the assault, authorities got a DNA match in the case, and Lazarous Lazaro Thomas is due to be sentenced on June 2 for the crime.

What they're saying:

In court, Taber talked about how the assault changed her forever.

"Every night, I triple check that all the doors and windows are locked and shut," she said, "sometimes, getting up again to make sure. After all this time, it still affects me in many ways and will forever, something the defendant will never understand the feeling of. That being said, I believe he should be sentenced to the highest extent, as it's been shown to the state, there's no remorse."

When given the chance to speak, Lazaro denied he was responsible for the attack. "I believe that I've been wrongly convicted," Thomas told the judge. "I don't understand how this person can sit up here and say that I did something."

After the sentence was handed down, Thomas had to be stopped by deputies from walking out of the court.