MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A sexual assault case against a rideshare driver has been dismissed.
“That dismissal has nothing to do with the defendant’s guilt or innocence but only represents our support of the victim,” Monongalia County Prosecutor Perri DeChristopher said.
Ademola T. Ajibade was indicted on second-degree sexual assault by a grand jury in September 2018. His case was dismissed, with prejudice, by Monongalia County Circuit Court Judge Susan Tucker on May 29, 2019.
“Ademola has maintained his innocence from day one and is very pleased that the criminal case has been dismissed with prejudice,” Defense Attorney Jared Moore said. “Although it was not an easy road getting to this point, persistence paid off. We were fortunate to have a good judge who followed the rule of law.”
DeChristopher submitted a motion requesting the dismissal May 28.
Tucker ordered the victim to disclose the names of the people she went out with the night of the alleged crime, the dismissal motion said. The victim testified she drank at a co-worker’s apartment before going to a bar with them. After becoming sick, she requested an Uber and was sexually assaulted during the ride.
She moved to Morgantown for a job just a few months before the night in question, Sept. 16, 2017. She didn’t have many friends and did not tell anyone at work about the sexual assault, the dismissal motion said.
“She desperately wanted to prevent them from knowing what had happened to her. She testified to the court that the crime had ‘taken so much’ from her already that she could not allow it to ‘take’ her workplace also,” DeChristopher wrote. “She declined to provide the names of these individuals to the state to enable the state to then provide the information in discovery.”
DeChristopher wrote she gave “great thought and consideration” whether to force the victim to provide the names of those she was with or send law enforcement to interview random co-workers at her workplace. She wrote either of those would be detrimental to the mental health of the victim and the state was unwilling to further injure her.
DeChristopher said she did not want to force the victim to reveal information that could be detrimental to her professional and personal life.
“I’m always concerned about the influences that cause a victim not to report and try to minimize those as much as possible but sometimes they’re out of our control,” DeChristopher said.
The Dominion Post reported on the case when Ajibade was arrested and again when he was indicted. Ajibade told The Dominion Post the charges against him were dropped July 1 and requested a retraction.
Paper policy is to report on the dismissal of charges previously reported.
Story by Will Dean/The Dominion Post