PORT ANGELES — A 49-year-old man has been charged with raping a woman who is confined to a wheelchair.
Rodney Charles Bright of Port Angeles was charged Friday with second-degree rape, forcible compulsion, with the aggravated circumstance of a vulnerable victim.
He will be arraigned on the charge Friday in Clallam County Superior Court.
Port Angeles police said Bright approached the woman as she was wheeling up the 200 block of South Lincoln Street on June 20.
The alleged victim told police that she had accepted Bright’s offer to help push her to Safeway.
Bright, who was a stranger to the woman, pushed her behind a building and sexually assaulted her, court papers said.
Bright was arrested at about 2 p.m. Thursday at the Texaco station at 210 E. First St.
He was being issued a trespassing warning when a citizen informed police that his friend, the woman, had been assaulted by Bright.
Port Angeles Deputy Chief of Police Brian Smith interviewed the alleged victim before Bright was arrested for investigation of rape, officer Anthony Bush wrote in his report.
Bright is also charged in a separate case with second-degree possession of stolen property for allegedly stealing a debit card June 20.
He is being held in the Clallam County jail on $50,000 bail.
