A Cherokee County jury convicted 33-year-old Sedric Charles Williams Jr., and a judge sentenced him to 40 years, with the first 35 to be served in prison, after the jury found him guilty of criminal attempt to commit rape and two counts of sexual battery stemming from an attack on a woman near an overpass outside Acworth. The woman had been walking from a nearby McDonald’s to a RaceTrac gas station when Williams approached her and asked her for sex.
According to WSB-TV, the woman refused Williams’s request, and he followed her onto the overpass at Highway 92 and Interstate 75, where he sexually assaulted her. She managed to escape, hide inside the RaceTrac store and call 911, as FOX 5 Atlanta reported. A deputy found Williams the next day in the Acworth area of Bartow County, the station’s report notes.
When investigators caught up with him, Williams reportedly asked, “Is this about the girl?” before telling them, “I just touched her back,” per the same account from WSB-TV. The report that triggered the investigation was filed on Aug. 1, 2024, and the case moved through the courts for more than two years before reaching trial.
Trial Evidence Included DNA, Surveillance Footage and a 911 Call
Cherokee County Assistant District Attorney Megan S. Hertel said trial evidence showed the victim told Williams she was not interested, walked away, and that Williams then chased and assaulted her. Prosecutors presented a witness who saw him chasing the woman, surveillance video that helped identify him and DNA evidence, according to the FOX 5 Atlanta coverage of the sentencing.
More than 50 exhibits were entered during the four-day trial, including the victim’s 911 call, surveillance footage and physical evidence collected during a sexual-assault nurse examination, the outlet’s earlier report states. Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before convicting Williams on Oct. 1, though they found him not guilty of a separate charge of criminal attempt to commit aggravated sodomy.
Prosecutors Point to a Second Victim a Year Earlier
District Attorney Susan K. Treadaway said Williams assaulted two victims within a year and that the community is safer now that he has been removed from the streets. Prosecutors tied the 2024 case to an earlier sexual battery in Acworth from September 2023, which the DA’s office said happened less than a mile from the overpass where the later attack occurred.
Williams pleaded guilty to sexual battery in that 2023 case, and officials say the victim in that incident described a situation similar to what happened on the overpass in 2024. Treadaway described the pattern as escalating violence by Williams against two separate victims within roughly a year.
Judge Bars Williams From Four Counties
As part of the sentence, the judge ordered Williams to have no contact with the victims and barred him from entering Bartow, Cherokee, Cobb and Paulding counties. The sentencing closes out a case in which the victim escaped into a RaceTrac and called 911. CBS News Atlanta reported on the sentencing.
