ELLSWORTH – Testimony and arguments in the trial of a local man charged with kidnapping and raping a woman ended Thursday afternoon, and jury deliberations are expected to get under way this morning.

Dale Martin, 45, is accused of restraining a local woman and forcing her to have sex with him at his Shore Road home on July 15, 2002. Martin was arrested after the woman broke a window in his bedroom and screamed for help, prompting a neighbor to call police.

Testimony in the case began Wednesday in Hancock County Superior Court. The jury of 11 men and three women, including two alternates, was sent home after attorneys made their closing arguments Thursday afternoon. The jurors are expected to start deliberating today. Justice William Brodrick is presiding.

After the woman and her 4-year-old son came to his house last summer for a visit, Martin allegedly locked the door, forced the woman into his bedroom and turned up his radio to drown out her screams, according to Mary Kellett, Hancock County assistant district attorney.

The boy was in an adjacent room and woke up during the incident but was not threatened or hurt, according to police.

Kellett told the jury that Martin choked the woman, causing her to vomit, before police arrived.

“She was fighting for her life,” Kellett said. “She thought she was going to die.”

The alleged victim testified Wednesday, telling the jury that Martin had demanded she have sex with him.

“I didn’t want any part of it,” she said. “I wanted to go home.”

When Noreen Folsom, Martin’s neighbor, went over to ask them to turn the music down, the woman asked Folsom for help, the alleged victim said.

“I said, ‘Noreen, he’s trying to kill me,'” the woman said.

Martin testified Thursday, telling the jury the woman became angry with him after he split a pizza with her, drank four beers and fell asleep on his couch. He woke up later that night and she agreed to have sex with him, but then she had a fit and started kicking out the window in his bedroom, Martin said.

“I grabbed her when she was kicking the window out to make her stop,” Martin said.

Detective Dottie Small of the Ellsworth Police Department, the primary investigator in the case, testified Thursday that the woman had multiple bruises and abrasions after the incident. Folsom testified Thursday that the woman told the neighbor she had gotten the bruises from the woman’s ex-husband, rather than from Martin.

Martin also is accused of loosely wrapping a lamp cord around the woman’s legs and threatening to pull it tighter if she tried to flee, according to Kellett. She said there is DNA evidence consistent with the woman’s story, but the evidence did prove Martin and the woman had sex that night.

Martin’s attorney, Steve Juskewitch of Ellsworth, argued that Martin did not rape or restrain the woman.

“Dale Martin is a deer caught in the headlights next to a crashed automobile,” Juskewitch said. “He’s being prosecuted for this accident.”