A 20-year-old Hillendale man convicted in April of raping and attempting to sodomize and kill a special-education teacher in her Owings Mills apartment last year was sentenced to life in prison yesterday.

Baltimore County Circuit Judge J. William Hinkel made his ruling after Tavon Linnel Fullwood of the 1300 block of Dartmouth Ave. gave a last-minute speech in which he denied his guilt, said he had not expected to get a fair trial in Baltimore County as a black man and claimed he had never seen the victim before.

In that same speech, he admitted that he was in the 27-year-old teacher's apartment the night of the attack, but said that his cousin committed the crime.

"I got a real good girlfriend," he said, as his mother and girlfriend sobbed. "I don't need to rape nobody."

Assistant State's Attorney Susan Hazlett said in court that the case against Fullwood was one of the most disturbing she had seen during her 14 years in the prosecutor's office.

The crime on March 15 of last year was unprovoked and brutal, she said. The woman, who had moved to the area from Pittsburgh a few months before the attack, was stabbed five times, beaten on the head and left barely conscious. The Sun does not identify victims of sex crimes.

Were it not for neighbors who had heard her screams, and for doctors at Maryland Shock Trauma Center who were able to save her despite a substantial loss of blood, the woman would have died, Hazlett said.

"I don't think I need to stress to you how dangerous the person who did this is," she said at the hearing. "I don't think there's any other option for this man than incarcerating him for the rest of his life. The citizens of this county and this state deserve to be protected from people like Tavon Fullwood."