Charges: Man targeted woman’s St. Paul home at random, raped her at gunpoint and robbed her

A woman was raped at gunpoint in her St. Paul home in the middle of the night by an intruder who told police that he randomly targeted the residence for burglary, according to charges filed Friday.

Deonte Marquon Thomas, 34, of Maplewood, was charged in Ramsey County District Court with first-degree criminal sexual conduct, first-degree burglary and being a felon in possession of a gun in connection with the break-in and sexual assault on April 15 shortly after 4 a.m. in the 300 block of S. Snelling Avenue.

Thomas was arrested Thursday in Blaine at a private recycling facility where he works and remains jailed in lieu of $150,000 bail ahead of a court hearing on Monday. Court records do not yet list an attorney for him.

According to the charges:

Officers arrived at the home in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood and found the woman sitting on her front steps. She said her attacker had run off about 10 minutes earlier. A police search was launched employing dogs and drones.

The woman said she was sleeping when she heard pounding on one side of her residence, then saw a man break the door and enter.

Thomas demanded money and took cash from her purse before he raped her at gunpoint and choked her as she yelled for her neighbors until she passed out.

At one point, she bit Thomas on the arm “as hard as she could” during a brief struggle for the gun, the complaint read.

Exterior surveillance video showed a pickup truck in the alley near the woman’s home around the time of the break-in with the license plate visible. A police check showed the pickup was registered to Thomas.

A still image from a second security video of a man walking on the woman’s property was shown to her by police, and she identified him as her attacker.

After his arrest, Thomas said he was “frustrated [and] angry” over the circumstances in his life and “violated someone’s personal space,” the complaint quoted him as saying.

He said he was “driving around in the early morning hours ... and randomly selected a house to break into,” the charges read.

He said he used a rock or a brick to break the window on the door, reached in and unlocked the door. He admitted robbing and raping the woman but denied choking her.

A police search of his pickup led to the seizure of a handgun and ammunition. A search of his girlfriend’s home in Stillwater, where Thomas is known to stay, turned up a loaded handgun and another loaded handgun in her vehicle.

His criminal history in Minnesota includes convictions for theft, receiving stolen property, domestic abuse and illegal weapons possession.