Child sex offender sentenced for abducting, raping Wichita girl walking home in 2019

A 61-year-old Wichita man convicted at his August trial of randomly abducting and raping a 15-year-old girl who was walking home from a local grocery store was sentenced Monday to 47 1/2 years in prison, according to Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office spokesman Dan Dillon.

Police arrested Anthony Craig Seymour after the girl jumped out of his car following the Nov. 18, 2019, assault. Wichita police have said Seymour shouted at the teenager while she was walking to the Dillons store on Douglas and Hillside then pulled his car in front of her, halting her on her way back home. He got out of the car, put a knife against her throat, grabbed her hair and forced her into the passenger seat, according to police and court records.

He then drove her to the 300 block of North Volutsia, where he sexually assaulted her, the records say.

A woman who called 911 used GPS to track the girl’s cellphone to the Volutsia address. Police searching the area saw the girl roll down the window of Seymour’s moving car and wave before she jumped out half naked, according to court records.

GPS tracking on the girl’s phone, which she left behind in the car, led police to Seymour’s home in the 1900 block of North Lorraine, where he was taken into custody with the knife and her property still in his possession, records say.

Seymour represented himself at his August trial over his own objections that he was neither educated nor prepared enough to act as his own lawyer, despite being warned by a Sedgwick County judge months ago of the pitfalls of self-representation after he fired his defense attorneys.

Jurors found him guilty of aggravated kidnapping, rape, aggravated criminal sodomy and aggravated robbery on Aug. 3 after a short trial and deliberations. The conviction is Seymour’s second in a Wichita child sex crimes case; in 2004, he was convicted of assaulting a 14-year-old girl.

In a written motion filed with the court Monday, Seymour’s newest defense lawyer asked the court to impose no more than a 10-year sentence, saying Seymour “was forced” to proceed to trial on his own. In the filing, Mark Schoenhofer called his client “the metaphorical lamb being led to the slaughter” and said the “conviction was obtained at the cost of Mr. Seymour’s constitutional right to counsel.”

But District Judge Seth Rundle denied the request and told Seymour he would serve 570 months instead.

Seymour plans to appeal, court records show.