CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — The mother of a man accused of raping a leasing agent is apologizing to the victim.
Haleemah Rabia's son, 24-year-old Salih Mahdi, is charged with rape, aggravated assault, battery, false imprisonment and robbery, after Clayton County police said he attacked a leasing agent at an apartment complex near Morrow.
Rabia said her son is mentally ill and should have been confined.
"I'm extremely sad and I'm very sorry for the victim," she told Channel 2's Tom Jones.
Officers said the 24-year-old Mahdi pretended to want to rent an apartment at the Magnolia Woods Apartments Tuesday. They said when he got the agent alone in apartment D9 he punched her in the eye, fracturing the eye socket. Officers said he then raped her and then falsely imprisoned her.
"When you confined her to a closet by placing a piece of furniture in front of the door preventing her escaping," Clayton County Magistrate Court Judge Beatriz Scott told Mahdi during a first appearance hearing.
Tenants at the apartment complex were stunned to hear about the attack.
"Just terrible I'm just shocked that something like that would happen," Rosetta Smith said.
Rabia wanted to send the leasing agent a message.
"I want the victim to know that I sought through Clayton County courts everything to keep my son, to hospitalize him to get the help that he needs," she said.
The mother said her son is paranoid schizophrenic.
She said she's been trying to get him help for the last five years, but hospitals and jails keep releasing him.
"This should not have happened," she said, referring to the attack.
Police said a maintenance man chased Mahdi until a Morrow police officer arrived.
They are now looking at him as a suspect in other sexual assaults in the area.
"We have sexual crimes and other crimes involving Mr. Madhi," officer Chandi Ashmore said during a news conference.
Mahdi's mother says her son needs help.
"What I want to happen now is for my son to receive the proper treatment and not be treated as a criminal," she said.
Rabia said she was going to court to get her son committed but stopped after she saw on the news he had been arrested for this attack.
Mahdi is being held without bond.
WSBTV
