A woman who was assaulted as a child by 11-year-old Audrii Cunningham‘s alleged k*iller has spoken out about her own nightmare ordeal – breaking down in tears as she realized how close she could have been to facing the same fate as the slain girl.
Carissa Davis, now in her 20s, was 10 years old in March 2007 when Don McDougal assaulted her during a family gathering at her uncle’s house in Brazoria County, Texas.
McDougal’s sisters were friends of her family and brought him along, she told the outlet.
“He came into the room that me and my cousin were sleeping in,” Davis said.
She said McDougal pilled her cousin from their bed and jumped in with her.
“(He) tried to take down my pants, and I immediately jumped up at that moment,” Davis told the outlet. “I remember looking at him. I was like, ‘Do you know how old I am?’”
She said she ran to the door but that the fiend chased after her.
“He grabbed me, and when he did, I just swung my arm, and I hit him,” Davis recounted, adding that he kept pursuing her but she managed to alert her aunt before he located her.
Davis said she immediately recognized McDougal when the brute’s photo appeared after Audrii’s disappearance. She now wonders what would have happened had she not fled from him that night.
“Everybody was still asleep. I mean, my uncle’s backyard was the woods. I mean, it could have been me,” she told the outlet.
McDougal was convicted of enticing a child in connection with the incident when he pleaded no contest to two counts.
He received a two-year prison sentence, but Davis said she believes he should have remained behind bars for much longer.
“I think Brazoria County definitely failed me and failed Audrii and possibly more,” she told ABC 13, noting that he wasn’t required to register as a sex offender.
McDougal has been charged with capital mu*rder in the death of Audri, whose body was found tied to a rock at the bottom of the Trinity River six days after she disappeared.
The Livingston, Texas, girl died of “homicidal violence including blunt head trauma,” according to the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Audrii was reported missing on Feb. 15, after she never made it onto her school bus and failed to show up to class. She was last seen with McDougal, a family friend, officials said.
Investigators believe she was ki*lled the same day she was reported missing.
McDougal was living on the family’s property in a camper, according to charging documents.
He would often walk Audrii to her bus stop before allegedly m*urdering the young girl and dumping her body in the river while she was tied to a large rock.
The suspect is a reported neo-Nazi with links to the Aryan Brotherhood and is seen in photos with a swastika tattoo on his right arm.
He was arrested on an unrelated assault charge on Feb. 16, and was still in Polk County Jail by the time Audrii’s body was found, records showed.
He is now being held without bond.
