HOLLIDAYSBURG — An Alexandria man told a Blair County jury on Tuesday that he didn’t rape a 14-year-old girl in April 2021 during a family holiday outing at an Antis Township motel.

“Absolutely not,” Donald Lennon Hetrick, 39, told the jury while describing his recollection of that Easter weekend.

It was Beck’s daughter, Hetrick said, who brought her 14-year-old friend who wasn’t supposed to stay overnight on Saturday. And it was the daughter, Hetrick testified, who pleaded with him to let her friend stay another night at the motel by sleeping in his room.

Hetrick said that after he relented, he drove from the Comfort Suites in Pinecroft to the McDonald’s on Plank Road and bought food for the girl, which she ate, then went to sleep.

On Monday, the jury heard the girl, now 17, accuse Hetrick of raping and sexually assaulting her that night when she was very intoxicated from smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol.

The jury on Monday also heard Beck — who faces her own charges in the case — testify about the series of text messages she exchanged with Hetrick, in which Hetrick repeatedly spoke of wanting to engage in sexual activity with the 14-year-old girl. Among the messages, Hetrick encouraged Beck to send the girl to his room and told her: “Please make it happen. Work your magic.”

Hetrick, while testifying Tuesday, denied creating and sending those text messages.

While a police investigation found them through his online social media account, Hetrick said he didn’t have access to his cellphone when they were created because he left his cellphone in Beck’s room for the 14-year-old girl to use. Testimony indicated that she didn’t have a cellphone at that time.

In court this morning, closing arguments are scheduled for the jury to consider in evaluating the charges state police filed against Hetrick, including rape of an unconscious victim, human trafficking, criminal conspiracy to engage in human trafficking, statutory sexual assault, sexual exploitation of children, corruption of minors, unlawful contact with minors and criminal use of a communications device.

In response to Hetrick’s testimony, First Assistant District Attorney Nichole Smith proposed that instead of driving to McDonald’s to get food for the 14-year-old girl, he could have driven the girl home.

Smith also challenged Hetrick’s claim that someone else had used his account to send a series of text messages to Beck. The prosecutor repeated Hetrick’s admission of having performed oral sex on Beck on Friday night, then suggested it was Hetrick’s “bad luck” that someone started using his account to suggest sex activity with the teenage girl.

Pletcher asked Hetrick if he thought the girls were aware of his sexual activity with Beck.

“It’s possible they may have heard something,” the defendant said.

Tuesday’s testimony also revealed that while a warrant for Hetrick’s arrest was issued on Dec. 21, 2022, he wasn’t arrested until January 11, 2023, when state police troopers found him underneath the mobile home where he was living.

Hetrick denied that he was attempting to hide. He said that when they arrived, he was under the mobile home looking for his cat that bolted out the door while attempting to put it in a carrier, so it could be taken for treatment of a urinary tract infection.

Hetrick has since remained in the Blair County Prison. His bail was initially set at $250,000 and Senior Judge Timothy M. Sullivan, in April 2023, denied a request for modification.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.