Woman heard begging for her life on 911 call after she refused sex, FL cops say
A man attacked and sexually assaulted a woman while holding her hostage after she told him she didn’t want to have sex with him, Florida authorities said.
Willie Cooks, 61, has been sentenced to 50 years in prison after a jury convicted him in May of false imprisonment, aggravated battery causing bodily harm and sexual battery with a deadly weapon/force, according to the State Attorney’s Office for the Seventh Judicial Circuit.
McClatchy News reached out to his attorney for comment June 17 but did not immediately receive a response.
Law enforcement received a 911 call on Feb. 6, 2024, from a woman who didn’t speak directly to the operator, but rather left the phone line open so the dispatcher could hear while she tried to negotiate for her life with a man later identified as Cooks, according to an arrest affidavit from the Daytona Beach Police Department.
The call taker heard the woman “begging him not to shoot her,” as Cooks told her they “both won’t make it tonight,” police wrote.
Authorities said they heard a physical fight happening over the phone, then the woman said she loved Cooks and her kids, and Cooks was heard telling her to take her clothes off.
She told Cooks she would perform sex acts on him and just wanted him to put the gun down, as she described what she was doing so the 911 dispatcher could hear, police said.
Officers rushed to the home and heard the woman crying for help. They reported finding her bleeding heavily as she tried to climb through a window that was too small to escape from, then Cooks appeared behind her and slammed the window shut, according to the affidavit.
Police forced their way inside and made contact with the woman, then she came running toward the front door covered in blood with injuries on her face and head, officers said.
Two officers carried her to safety as law enforcement convinced Cooks to come out of the house and surrender, according to police.
The woman told police the violent night started when she was on the phone with a friend and Cooks got annoyed because he wanted to have sex, and she told him she didn’t want to, according to police.
They started arguing, then the situation escalated when Cooks grabbed a gun and “threatened to kill her if she did not have sex with him,” police said.
He raped her, but she said he was still angry afterward and kept the gun on him, threatening to kill her, according to officers.
She told police she and Cooks started physically fighting, and she believed he was going to kill her, describing it as “the fight of my life,” according to the affidavit.
During the altercation, she accused Cooks of biting her in the face, pistol-whipping her and punching her.
She found a second gun and tried to shoot Cooks, but the gun didn’t fire, and Cooks “quickly overpowered her,” police said.
She managed to call 911, and police rescued her.
The woman said she heard Cooks’ gun go off and thought she had been shot, but medical staff later found she wasn’t. She needed sutures on her face and foot and had lost teeth during the fight, police said.
Cooks will be designated a dangerous sexual felony offender, according to prosecutors.
This story was originally published June 17, 2025 at 5:18 PM with the headline "Woman heard begging for her life on 911 call after she refused sex, FL cops say."