An Iowa teen who fatally stabbed her alleged rapist could face up to 20 years in prison.
Pieper Lewis, 17, pleaded guilty in June 2021 to voluntary manslaughter and willful injury in the June 2020 killing of 37-year-old Zachary Brooks.
The teen is set to be sentenced Wednesday in a Polk County Courtroom in Des Moines.
Pieper allegedly stabbed Brooks 30 times in the chest, arms and groin after he allegedly sexually assaulted her multiple times in the days leading up to the killing, the Des Moines Register reported, citing court documents.
According to Pieper’s plea agreement obtained by PEOPLE, the teen, who was 15 at the time, said she ran away from home three times between January and March 2020 before she started sleeping in the hallway of a building in Des Moines.
In a statement she made as part of her plea agreement, Pieper said she briefly stayed with a man in the building but left after he became “verbally, physically and sexually abusive towards me shortly after I moved into his apartment.”
Pieper said she then moved in with another man who lived across the hall, and lived with him from mid-April until her arrest on June 2, 2020. Pieper said shortly after she moved in the man created a dating profile for her and put it on a dating website.
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SOURCE: PEOPLE, Christine Pelisek
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