Fort Worth girl attacked at bus stop takes the stand in alleged attacker's trial

FORT WORTH, Texas - A Fort Worth teen described how she was attacked and almost killed by a stranger on her way to school.

Doricka Uwimana is now 14 years old. She was 12 when police say she was beaten and choked as she walked to a school bus stop.

The attack was so severe that she had to get a heart transplant. Her accused attacker is on trial. She testified against him on Monday.

The young girl who was attacked is now 14 years old. She was the first witness prosecutors called. They never asked her to identify her attacker, but she did describe some of what happened to her.

Uwimana bravely answered questions on Monday about the attack in April 2018 that nearly claimed her life. Speaking Swahili through an interpreter, she told jurors how the man who approached while she was walking to her school bus stop near Las Vegas Trail and I-30 at first seemed nice and then became violent.

Prosecutors told the jury that man was Terry King II. They say the victim, who was 12 years old at the time, fought with King, and he choked her so severely that she began bleeding through her nose and mouth.

Prosecutors say King was scared off when the school bus approached. The bus driver, who waited for Doricka because she often ran late, says the girl came walking from a different direction than usual. Her hoodie was pulled over her head.

Bus driver Teresa Dover fought back tears while describing her.

"I saw that her face was bloody,” she said. “Her head was bloody. She had grass…. She had grass all over her body."

Dorika's father also testified describing her condition.

The state then moved to the investigation and King’s arrest in Oklahoma three months after the attack. It was based on tips from an unrelated road rage incident. They played a video-recorded interview at the Oklahoma City Jail and spelled out how they say surveillance video from an earlier school bus and nearby businesses show King walking and then running from the area where Dorika was attacked.

The state also showed video inside a Waffle House where they say he changed his appearance and called his wife to pick him up.

King is facing charges of aggravated kidnapping and injury to a child. Testimony will resume again first thing Tuesday.