Robbery defendant says Cedar Rapids strippers only claiming to be victims

Ramone Moon testified today a stripper from Woody's Show Club asked him to come back to her motel room for a “party,” but admitted he couldn't identify her as one of the strippers who testified Moon robbed them last July.

Moon, charged with four counts of first-degree robbery, is accused of robbing strippers Tiffany Caruthers and Tequeria Burrage and their boyfriends, Jonathan Harris and Deontrice Abbey of Davenport, at the Motel 6 on Cedar Rapids' southwest side July 18.

Moon, 18, of Cedar Rapids, said Caruthers looked like one of the strippers who testified, but he couldn't say for sure. The woman who invited him back to her motel room gave him a “stage name,” but Moon said he doesn't remember it.

“She was caramel complexion, more like Tiffany,” he said.

Caruthers, 20, and Burrage, 21, both of Davenport, the victims in this case, are both African American.

The defense rested after Moon testified, and the prosecution will present a rebuttal witness before closings arguments begin this afternoon.

The victims testified during the trial this week that Moon came into their room armed with a handgun, demanded money, pistol whipped Abbey and assaulted the others. Harris then got into a struggle with Moon for the gun and Moon was shot twice.

Moon testified the stripper texted him when she got off work and gave him her room number. His “associate” dropped him off and when he knocked on the door, a woman's voice told him to come in and unlocked the door.

Kjas Long, Moon's public defender, asked him what were his intentions that night.

“To have a party and sex,” Moon said.

Long asked if he had a lot of girlfriends or lovers.

“Yeah. I was messing around with a lot of girls back then,” Moon said.

Long asked if he was addicted to sex.

“Some people have told me that,” Moon said.

Moon said he had about $700 in cash on him that night and was “flashing” it to the stripper in hopes of impressing her. Most of the money was from child support that his mother had given to him. He was 17 at the time and his grandmother was his legal guardian.

When he woke up from the hospital, he only had about $220 in his belongings, he said.

Moon said he didn't have a gun that night. When he went into the room, it was just the two dancers, then the two men came in. He said one of the men was upset and started arguing with one of the women and he started feeling uncomfortable.

Abbey and Moon then got into a struggle and then Harris jumped in with the gun and he remembers being hit with the gun on the side of his face and it chipped his tooth. Then, Moon tried to leave the room but Harris and Abbey continued to fight with him outside the room and he heard the gun go off.

“The last thing I remember was them saying ‘Shoot him, shoot him, '” Moon said.

Moon said looking back on it now, he thinks he was set up.

“I was scared, actually,” he said.

Moon was shot in the abdomen and thigh. He had two surgeries to repair his pancreas, kidney, liver and intestines. His gallbladder also had to be removed.