CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The father of a 20-year-old man charged with raping a woman in Charlotte’s McAlpine Park told Eyewitness News his son suffers from mental illness but had refused to get help.
Police arrested Tenedrick Strudwick shortly after the attack Tuesday evening. Police said Strudwick hit the 64-year-old woman in the head and dragged her off a trail and raped her.
Strudwick’s father said Thursday his son had moved up from York County a little more than a week earlier.
“He came here, I was trying to help him get back on his feet so he could be a productive citizen,” Lee Strudwick said, in his east Charlotte apartment.
He had not heard about his son’s arrest until we told him.
“I'm shocked by it. He has grandmother, grandfather and other family,” he said.
Tenedrick Strudwick had been arrested in 2013 on charges including assault and robbery, but court records show those cases were dismissed.
The charges he is facing now, including rape and armed robbery, are more serious and his father can only hope that the woman he’s accused of attacking so viciously can recover.
“I hope that there's no lasting effect on them but I'm sure that there will be some kind of effect on her life,” Lee Strudwick said.
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