Sentencing set for man guilty of raping girl walking home from Wichita grocery store

A Wichita man charged with abducting and raping at knife point a 15-year-old girl walking home from a local Dillons grocery store in 2019 has been found guilty.

A Sedgwick County jury deliberated for about three hours before convicting Anthony C. Seymour, 61, of aggravated kidnapping, rape, aggravated criminal sodomy and aggravated robbery, according to court records and a spokesman for the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office.

The verdict came late Wednesday, the DA’s spokesman, Dan Dillon, said. This is Seymour’s second rape conviction in a Wichita child sex crimes case; he also was convicted in 2004 of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.

The trial started Monday. Seymour, who represented himself, had asked for it to be delayed to give a new lawyer he’d recently hired time to prepare. Seymour had been acting as his own attorney since January after firing his two previous lawyers. Court records list five different defense attorneys for Seymour since prosecutors filed charges shortly after his November 2019 arrest, including two public defenders and three retained.

In a motion filed Monday asking the court to reconsider a July refusal to further postpone the trial, Seymour wrote that he “cannot possibly represent himself,” “has no knowledge of or familiarity with the rules of evidence, criminal procedure, or trial strategies” and “has a limited education.”

Moving forward on schedule, he argued in the motion, would leave him “without his right to effective representation.”

But court records show Seymour had been warned by the court months ago of “the downfalls and risks of self-representation.” A judge also previously continued the trial five times at Seymour’s request, according to the records.

Seymour will be sentenced on Sept. 19 by District Judge Seth Rundle.

Seymour’s attack on the girl was random. Wichita police have said he shouted at the teenager while she was walking to the Dillons store at Douglas and Hillside on Nov. 18, 2019, then pulled his car in front of her to stop her on her way back home.

The girl told police Seymour — a stranger — got out, put a knife against her throat, grabbed her hair, forced her into the passenger seat and told her he wanted sex.

He then drove her to the 300 block of North Volutsia, where he carried out the sexual assault, police have said.

A woman who called the girl on her cellphone after the abduction called 911 and used GPS to track her to the Volutsia address. Police searching the area saw the girl roll down the window of Seymour’s moving car and wave at them before she jumped out half naked, an affidavit released by the court says.

GPS tracking on the girl’s phone, which she left behind in the car, led police to Seymour at his home in the 1900 block of North Lorraine, where he was arrested with the knife and girl’s property still in his possession, the affidavit says.