A 43-year-old Massachusetts man, Joshua Hubert, was convicted of multiple charges in connection with a 7-year-old’s 2017 attempted murder. Hubert had been a close friend of the victim’s parents and had known her for years.
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As reported by Boston.com, Huber was found guilty on two counts of attempted murder, one count of strangulation or suffocation, and one count of kidnapping a child on Thursday, September 18. He was also found not guilty of two charges of child rape.
“I feel like I’m living in To Kill a Mockingbird,” Hubert’s attorney, Kevin Larson, told the outlet. “I don’t know how rational jurors could look at the evidence and say that Joshua Hubert was guilty in this case.”
Joshua Hubert will be sentenced on October 3.
Attempted Murder
As reported by MassLive, the incident occurred back on August 27, 2017. Prosecutors said in court that Hubert was in the then-7-year-old’s home for a family gathering. After the reunion ended, Hubert took the girl, who was still asleep, and placed her in his vehicle at around 2:30 a.m.
The girl, now a 15-year-old, testified that she woke up when Hubert initially picked her up, but believed it was her grandfather taking her to an air mattress. Then, she found herself in Hubert’s car, with video surveillance showing the vehicle travelling around Worcester, Massachusetts.
Prosecutors alleged that Hubert raped the girl in the backseat and strangled her, leaving bruises on her body. The girl attempted to fight back, but she was overpowered by the adult man, so she tried a different approach.
“I was thinking that he wanted me dead,” the girl testified. “If I breathed really lightly and quietly, he would think that I was dead and everything would stop.”
Hubert, according to prosecutors, wrapped the girl in a blanket and placed her in the car’s trunk. Then, Hubert stopped on the I-290 overpass and threw her over the bridge, with her plunging into Lake Quinsigamond.
The 7-year-old, however, managed to survive the incident. She swam to a home located on North Lear Street, and police were subsequently called.
While Joshua Hubert was found guilty of most of his charges, he was acquitted of the child rape charges. It was revealed in court that the DNA found in the girl’s underwear actually belonged to her father. The girl and the father, however, denied any inappropriate behavior.