An Iowa teenager, who was a sex trafficking victim and pleaded guilty to stabbing and killing a man she claimed had raped her, has escaped custody from a women’s center in Des Moines where she was serving her probation sentence.

Piper Lewis, 18, was last seen walking out of the Fresh Start Women’s Center gates early on Friday morning at around 6:15 am. According to a probation violation report, she cut off her GPS tracking monitor later that Friday.

The 18-year-old was sentenced in September to closely supervised probation of five years, and the judge ordered her to pay $150,000 restitution to the family of alleged rapist Zachary Brooks, whom she stabbed to death.

The police have issued a warrant for Lewis’s arrest, and the probation report also asked the court to revoke her deferred judgment and impose her original sentence. She could get up to 20 years imprisonment if her deferred judgment is revoked.

The five-year probation sentence she received was seen as a merciful punishment because she had endured terrible abuse at her victim’s hands. Although the $150,000 restitution for the victim’s family invoked mixed reactions, her sympathizers and well-wishers contributed over $560,000 to her GoFundMe campaign to cover the restitution costs and other needs.

The court would have erased her prison sentence if the teenager had not escaped custody and finished her probation.

Last year, Lewis pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and willful injury in the murder of Zachary Brooks, 37, who died on June 2020. Although the prosecution initially charged her with first-degree murder, they reduced the charges to involuntary manslaughter and willful injury. Each charge carries a maximum 10-year sentence.

Lewis received her sentencing on Tuesday, September 13. Judge David Porter, a District Court Judge in Polk County, deferred the 20-year prison sentence, which means that if she violated any of the terms of her probation, Lewis could be imprisoned for 20 years.

Porter also said that the court had no other option but to order her to pay the $150,000 restitution because it was mandatory under Iowa state law.

The teenager was just 15-years-old when she killed Zachary Brooks in an apartment in Des Moines. Lewis told authorities that she had fled home to escape her adoptive mother.

She had nowhere else to go and was sleeping in the hallways of different buildings. One night, she met a 28-year-old man while squatting in a Des Moines apartment hallway. He took her in and cared for her. Shortly after bringing her in, the man started to traffic her to other men for sex against her wishes.

According to Lewis, Brooks was one of the men she was forcibly trafficked to, and he raped her numerous times before she finally snapped and stabbed him.

Although prosecutors did not deny that Brooks raped her, they argued that Lewis stabbed him while he was asleep and was not an immediate threat to her.

During her sentencing, Judge Porter told her that the probation sentence was her second chance and she would not get a third.