Man arrested in rape of runaway
Editor’s note: Washington City Mission officials clarified that Brandon Barnickel stayed on occasion in the mission’s cold-weather overnight shelter but was not a regular resident of the mission.
A man who was staying at the Washington City Mission was arrested in the rape of a 16-year-old girl who had been reported as a runaway to Washington police by her parents Monday night.
Brandon C. Barnickel, 31, of 84 W. Wheeling St., was arrested Tuesday by state police after he allegedly forced the girl into an abandoned house on Hillside Avenue in Washington, then forced her to have sex.
Trooper Sarah Teagarden, who filed the charges against Barnickel, said the girl reportedly got into an argument with her mother and ran away. Her family looked for her before reporting her as missing to city police.
“City police did not even have a chance to have her entered as missing when she came home and told (her family) she had been raped,” Teagarden said.
The girl had been walking in an alley that runs parallel to Jefferson Avenue along Catfish Creek when she spotted two men, one of them later identified by police as Barnickel, in an area known as “The Beach.”
“He kept talking to her and telling her that she knew him,” Teagarden said.
Barnickel persuaded the 16-year-old to go with him, stopping at an acquaintance’s house and asking if the two could stay there, Teagarden said. He then took her to the abandoned house and forced her through a window, the trooper said. Barnickel then allegedly forced the girl to have sex with him. The girl told police she was able to get away while Barnickel was putting his clothes back on. She then ran home and told her parents what happened. They took her for treatment at Washington Hospital, where Teagarden talked with her.
“She was able to give us a good description of her attacker,” Teagarden said. “Another guy who had been at the beach also called city police and asked if they were looking for a girl. He told police that Barnickel was with her and where they had gone.”
Overnight, troopers searched several vacant houses in that area and found Barnickel inside the one on Hillside.
“At first, he denied everything,” Teagarden said of Barnickel. “Then he said that she was 20 years old and that the sex was consensual.”
Barnickel, who also is charged with corruption of minors, was arraigned before District Judge Robert Redlinger and placed in Washington County jail on $50,000 bond. He is scheduled to have a preliminary hearing Feb. 16 before Redlinger.