The interior of the cinderblock cell at a residence in Klamath Falls.

It was Cinco de Mayo and The Pikey, an Irish pub and the busiest bar in downtown Klamath Falls, was hopping.

Before closing, a 21-year-old woman walked out around 1 a.m. hoping to catch a ride with a friend. But the friend had left so she looked around for other cars she might recognize.

A strange man approached. He asked her for her name and number and what her astrological sign was. She told him she wasn’t interested.

She remembered walking along the sidewalk and the next thing she knew, she said, she ended up in the passenger seat of Negasi Zuberi’s SUV.

The Klamath Falls woman described the next terrifying 13 hours when she said Zuberi fired a Taser into her ribs, handcuffed her and repeatedly raped her in the back of his white Honda Pilot that he parked in the garage of his home.

“I was repeating the names of my loved ones in my head” to stay awake, she testified Wednesday, because she thought he was going to kill her.

The woman spent about four hours on the witness stand during the second week of Zuberi’s federal trial in Medford. He is accused of abducting the Klamath Falls woman in May 2023 and a Seattle woman in July 2023, sexually assaulting them and imprisoning them in a cinder-block cell in the garage of the house he rented from the Klamath Falls mayor.

Zuberi, now 30, has pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping, gun possession and transportation for criminal sexual activity, contending through his lawyers that the sex was consensual.

The Klamath Falls woman testified that Zuberi pistol-whipped her, repeatedly raped her and filmed her on his cellphone for what he called an “insurance” sex video, demanding that she pretend she was having a good time, she said.

By then, she said, “I kind of was hoping that I would die.”

She made up a story about needing to give medication to her sick dog, which apparently convinced Zuberi to let her go, she testified. That may have saved her life, she said.

The Klamath Falls woman was worried that Zuberi might come looking for her and she was ashamed by what had occurred, she said, so she initially told others that an old friend high on drugs had beaten her up to explain her injuries. She didn’t disclose to them at first that she had been sexually assaulted, she said.

She went to the hospital the day of the assault and called police a few days later, she testified.

Yet once she reported the alleged rape to Klamath Falls, the officer who responded and questioned her didn’t seem interested and didn’t take the unwashed clothing she had worn that night or the sketch she made of her attacker, she testified.

Officer Taylor Herbst told the woman she’d be in touch, but never called her back, the woman testified. She said she had to call Klamath Falls police three or four more times before another officer responded.

She then didn’t hear from police again until after Zuberi’s arrest on July 16, 2023 – the day after the Seattle woman reported her kidnapping.

Herbst’s seeming indifference “felt completely degrading,” the woman testified, and “made me feel like I was making the wrong decision to report the rape.”

Herbst, 35, a 10-year member of the police department, declined comment when contacted by phone Wednesday. Klamath Falls Chief Rob Dentinger didn’t return a phone message seeking comment.

Leaves bar

The Klamath Falls woman, now 22, said she had two drinks at The Pikey on the night of May 5, 2023, a Moscow Mule and Red Bull refresher that contains vodka.

She had gone out with friends after finishing her shift as a hostess at a Mexican restaurant in Klamath Falls. She noticed Zuberi looking at her at one point and his gaze with “abnormally wide” eyes made her uncomfortable, she said.

Once outside the bar, he came up to her, asked for her name and number, she said. He was persistent so she finally gave him her name and a text-only number to try to shake him off, she testified.

She said she didn’t remember getting into his car but described feeling “confused.” She said she typically has a high alcohol tolerance and was surprised by feeling woozy.

She said she was tired when she went to the bar and wasn’t questioned during her hours on the stand whether she thought anyone had spiked her drink in the bar.

Once in Zuberi’s car, she said she complained that he was driving too fast and tried to jump out when he slowed. He suddenly pulled to the side of a rural road, got out and came around to her front passenger door and pointed a Taser at her, she said.

She held up her leather bag to try to protect herself but was stunned in the upper ribs, she testified.

It felt like “every one of my bones was getting Tased with a cattle prod,” she said.

Zuberi then punched her up to 20 times, handcuffed her wrists and shackled her feet, grabbed her and put her in the back seat, she said.

At one point, he fired a pistol from the driver’s seat through the front passenger window and a casing fell on her lap, burning her and leaving a faint scar, she told jurors.

‘My last shot’

He drove her back to his home, forcing her to put a black-hooded sweatshirt and blanket over her face as he backed into his garage, took her cellphone, wrapped it in tinfoil and removed the battery, she testified.

She said he told her: “It’s just so crazy. I thought you were just so pretty, and I just took you.”

She said she noticed cinder blocks piled in the garage as Zuberi held her captive and repeatedly raped her in the back of the locked SUV.

Prosecutors and police say the cinder blocks were used to build a cell in the garage where the Seattle woman testified earlier in the trial that Zuberi had kept her and sexually assaulted her after kidnapping her from Washington two months later.

He called her “stupid, the b-word, a whore,” she testified, and badmouthed his “baby mama and two kids” who he said were in the house, she testified. He called his children’s mother “ugly and dumb,” she said.

“He said he wanted to have a bunch of women get pregnant so he could have an army of servants and then an army of soldiers,’’ she testified.

Zuberi claimed he worked in cybersecurity and later as a cop, she said.

He often yanked her by her hair and her necklace, and ultimately broke her necklace. She scooped up the pendant that fell off her necklace – a glass eye drop with blue mushroom inside – because it held special significance, having bought it at a fair with her sister after their father’s death.

At one point during her ordeal, the Klamath Falls woman said, Zuberi drove her out of the garage — with her head covered by a blanket — to pick up what he called “evidence” from the roadside where he had fired a Taser at her. The prongs and a cap had fallen off the stun gun, she said. He then returned to the home, backing into the garage, she said.

She said she tried to talk to Zuberi to humanize herself but he didn’t react until she mentioned her dog Duke, a mastiff-pit bull mix. She then fabricated a story of having to treat the dog for a skin disease or he would die, she said.

“I realized that was kind of my last shot,” she testified. “It was the only thing he seemed to care about.”

He eventually gave her a rag to wipe blood off her face and drove her to town and then to a Chase bank branch, telling her he needed “to pay for what he’d done,” she testified. She didn’t want his money, she said, but he insisted, giving her $300 in cash.

Evidence not sought

Asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Lichvarcik why she didn’t try to escape, the woman said Zuberi threatened to shoot her and that he would find her and kill her and her family.

She told him the street where she lived but didn’t give him her address and he dropped her by a vacant home on May 6, 2023, she said.

She walked to her house, changed her clothes, called a close friend around 1:30 p.m. and asked him to take her to the hospital.

She didn’t divulge what happened, she said, but made up a story that an old friend of hers was driving her somewhere, was on drugs and had beaten her up.

When she didn’t get checked at the hospital after waiting for at least a couple of hours, she returned to her close friend’s family home. They took her back to the hospital the next day.

She saw a doctor and got an CAT scan. Dr. Jay Williams, of Skylakes Medical Center, said the woman suffered a concussion and an assault; she never said she had been raped.

She called the Klamath Falls police non-emergency line a few days later, she testified, after she admitted to her best friend that she had made up the story of how she gotten hurt.

The woman said Herbst, the Klamath Falls officer, questioned her in her backyard, but didn’t seem at all interested or concerned.

Herbst didn’t take the clothes, the sketch or an object that looked like a walkie talkie part that ended up in her bag, she said. The officer took only the lip balm that she said Zuberi had given her.

Herbst never got back to her, the woman said, and she called Klamath Falls police three or four more times before another officer talked with her and said he’d be in touch if they found out anything.

She heard back from Klamath Falls police and an FBI agent only after Zuberi’s arrest, she said. She burst into tears when she learned he was in custody, according to audio of the interview played in court.

She said she had struggled with whether to go to police because she feared “that blood would be on my hands” if her attacker followed through with threats to harm her and her family.

But if she didn’t, she thought he might harm another woman, she testified.

“It didn’t seem like he had any care for human life at all,” she said.

The trial is anticipated to continue through the end of the week.