Man blames voices in his head for vicious sexual assault at MS Coast outlet mall
Andrew Malik Jones raped a woman because the voices in his head told him to do it.
Jones, 30, made that admission and more when he pleaded guilty Wednesday to sexual battery, robbery and aggravated assault in the July 21, 2021, attack on a woman at Gulfport Premium Outlets outdoor mall. He entered the pleas in Circuit Court in Harrison County.
The attack occurred, Jones said, after the voices in his head told him “to go sexually assault a woman.”
After he heard the voices, Jones said he walked to the outlet mall, went straight to the women’s restroom, and did just that. He said his mom had kicked him out of the house and he was homeless at the time.
According to Assistant District Attorney Matthew Burrell, the victim was from out of state, and at the outlet mall with family that day.
The woman was going to walk out of a bathroom stall when Jones walked in, pushed her back in the stall, punched her 20 times in the face, broke the bones in her eye socket, and sexually assaulted her.
The woman tried to stop him, Burrell said, even offering Jones the $2,000 she had in purse, but nothing worked. She said Jones took her purse before he left, but her husband and other family members saw Jones when he came out of the restroom.
The woman’s husband and others managed to keep Jones on the outlet mall property until Gulfport police officers got there to make the arrest.
Afterward, the woman was taken to the hospital for a rape examination and treatment for her injuries. DNA from a swab of semen taken from the woman during the rape exam matched the DNA profile of Jones, Burrell said.
Judge Lisa Dodson said an ‘injustice” had been committed against the victim because Jones, who has a history of mental illness but was found fit to stand trial, should have never been a free man at the time.
To back that up, Dodson outlined a litany of misdemeanor and felony offenses Jones had committed in Florida, Mississippi and Texas over the years.
In one case, for example, the judge questioned why Jones was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of peeping tom when he had been indicted on felony charge of voyeurism in one case. In that incident, on Dec. 14, 2019, an 11-year-old girl was in the women’s restroom at Jones Park when Jones walked in.
The girl told police Jones was peeking through the stalls while she was using the restroom. When the girl walked out, she said Jones was on the bathroom floor with his genitals exposed and masturbating.
Dodson pointed to that offense and other allegations of wrongdoing against Jones for simple assault, felony assault and other charges before sentencing him to 30 years in prison for sexual battery and 20 years for aggravated assault, with both sentences to run consecutively, along with a 15-year suspended sentence for robbery.
In all, Jones will spend 50 years in prison for the crimes followed by 15 years under post-release supervision. He will also have to register as a sex offender.
In addition, Jones is still awaiting prosecution on an additional charge of sexual battery in Harrison County. In that case, Jones is accused of sexually assaulting his cellmate two weeks after the outlet mall attack. The assault occurred in the Harrison County jail. If prosecuted as a habitual offender in that case, he could go to prison for life without parole.
The Harrison County District Attorney’s Office asked the judge to sentence Jones to the maximum allowed by law.
Defense Attorneys Angela Broun and Phillip Whittmann asked the judge prior to sentencing to take into account the mental illness Jones suffers from, and how he spent the majority of his life in and out of mental health treatment facilities, along with how Jones had been the victim of abuse and other crimes since the time he was a boy.
Jones, Broun said, was 4-years-old when officials found what appeared to be burn marks on his body. He ended up in foster care, she said, and became close to his foster mom.
But when the foster mom died of an aneurysm, Broun said, the foster dad blamed Jones and the other foster children in the home for his wife’s death and physically abused all of them. In addition, Broun said, Jones was sexually assaulted and abandoned as a child.
Prior to his plea Wednesday, Jones underwent psychiatric treatment at the state hospital at Whitfield. He had been found competent to stand trial prior to entering a plea.
The judge noted that other women had also accused Jones of sex crimes but didn’t pursue charges against him. In one case, she said, a neighbor of the Jones family accused him of attempting to rape her. In another case, the judge said, a home health care provider went to the Jones family home to treat someone there when Jones exposed his genitalia and started masturbating.
When the health care provided walked outside, she said Jones followed her and started touching her. The woman called for help for the alleged assault but didn’t want to pursue charges in that case.
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