St. Paul Man Convicted of Raping Woman He Met on Dating App
A jury has convicted a 38-year-old St. Paul man of raping a woman at his home in March shortly after they met on a dating app. The conviction is a significant development in the case, which highlights the importance of prioritizing safety when meeting people online.
Jurors last week, after a two-day trial, found Green Isiah Kelly Jr. guilty of third-degree criminal sexual conduct, but acquitted him of the more severe first-degree criminal sexual conduct charge. He remains jailed ahead of his Oct. 31 sentencing. His attorney did not respond to messages Thursday by the Pioneer Press asking for comment on the verdict.
Green Isiah Kelly Jr. (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
Previous Convictions and Incarceration
Kelly was a convicted sex offender at the time of the March 23 rape in St. Paul’s Summit-University area. In 2013, he pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal sexual conduct for raping a woman who had passed out from alcohol at a party in St. Paul, court records show. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, followed by 10 years of conditional release.
Most people sent to prison in Minnesota serve two-thirds of their sentence in custody and the remaining on supervised release in the community. Kelly was given an additional 15 months in prison in 2020 for repeatedly punching a fellow inmate in the face at Minnesota Correctional Facility-Faribault, according to court records. He was put on intensive supervised release in September.
The Incident and Investigation
According to the March 25 criminal complaint, a 37-year-old woman from Menomonie, Wis., reported to police about 4:15 p.m. March 23 that she had been sexually assaulted less than two hours earlier at a home in the 800 block of Aurora Avenue. She identified the suspect as “Isiah,” who was later identified as Kelly.
She told police she had met Kelly through a dating app about a month earlier, and that they then texted and made Facetime calls to each other. She said the first time she saw Kelly, she realized the photos he had posted on the dating app were not of him. She questioned him about that, and he admitted as much.
The woman said she told Kelly that she wasn’t interested in dating him, but was willing to be friends. They then talked casually. Kelly asked if they could get together, and she said she was coming into town on March 23. Around 11:30 a.m., she agreed to cut his hair and beard, and went to his home on Aurora Avenue to meet him.
The Assault and Aftermath
When they returned to Kelly’s home, he asked her to come inside to cut his hair and offered to pay her to do so. The woman was suspicious because Kelly was bald, but he then said he’d pay her full price of a haircut if she would trim his beard. When she and Kelly went into his bedroom, where she thought she was going to trim his beard, he said, “Let’s get down to business” and grabbed her arm and began to kiss her on the neck.
She told police she pushed him away and told him, “Not that type of business” and repeated that she did not want to be in a relationship with him and did not want to engage in sex. Kelly then grabbed her by the arm and threw her on the bed. He ripped off her shirt, pants, and underwear and pinned his body against hers as she screamed and kicked at him.
The woman told police she repeatedly yelled, “No! I don’t want to have sex with you!” Kelly stopped when his phone rang and someone knocked on the door. When he answered the door in his boxer briefs, she grabbed her torn shirt and pants but could not find her underwear.
She tried to leave the room with one pant leg on, but Kelly met her at the bedroom door and told her not to go. She was able to get past him and leave the home. The woman drove directly to a hospital in Wisconsin, where she reported the assault and underwent a sexual assault exam.
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