CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Nervous and often fighting tears, the 47-year-old jogger who was pistol-whipped and raped at gunpoint in September took the stand Tuesday to recount the crime that many of her family members and co-workers don't know happened to her.

"Nothing is the same," she said.

The woman sat about 30 feet from James W. Daniel III, the man on trial for her Sept. 2 rape on West 104th Street in Cleveland's Edgewater neighborhood that has been dubbed as the "early morning rape." He's also charged in connection with a rape and an armed robbery in Lakewood.

She was the first of five witnesses called by Cuyahoga County prosecutors, who said in opening statements earlier Tuesday that DNA evidence collected at the scene of the rapes, cellphone records and the robbery victims place Daniel at the scene of each of the Labor Day weekend crimes.

The woman said she started her morning routine Sept. 2 the same as every day -- about 5 a.m. she jogged or walked from her West Side home to Starbucks on Clifton Boulevard to get a coffee before work. She used the time to plan the day ahead at her job in the financial industry, where she works 50-60 hours a week, she said.

As she turned south on West 104th Street from Lake Avenue about 5:30 a.m., she said she felt "a wind" coming from behind her just before a man jumped on her back.

Security cameras at a parking garage across the street caught the initial attack, as the man grabbed her by the back of her racer-back workout shirt and dragged her face-down between two cars. When she screamed for help, he placed the silver, flat-barreled handgun to her cheek and threatened to kill her if she kept screaming, she said.

He demanded her belongings, but she had only a pre-loaded Starbucks card and her iPod. She tossed the Starbucks card into the street, hoping her attacker would get off her and grab it, she said. He didn't.

With his gun at her back, the man led her down an alleyway behind an apartment building. He pushed her against a stone wall, pulled out a condom, and raped her, telling her it was punishment for not having anything for him to take, she said. The man swore at her throughout the attack.

Her attacker left through the alleyway, and she ran around the building to Clifton. She saw a minivan stopped at a red light and ran to the car, screaming for help.

The driver of the car saw her, and drove through the red light. But Ricky Teamor was waiting at a bus stop and asked if he could help.

"She was frantic and she was hollering for help," Teamor testified. "She needed help."

Teamor calmed her down and called 911, after she told him she had been pistol-whipped and robbed. Prosecutors played the call for the jury. The woman can be heard sobbing in the background.

The woman said she purposely did not tell Teamor and a construction worker nearby who came to the bus stop that she was raped. When one of Daniel's defense attorneys, Frank Cavallo, asked why she would give incomplete information, she said she was "ashamed."

"I've been diminishing what happened to me since it happened," she said.

The description of the man she gave to police -- a smaller, light-skinned black man -- matched Daniel, prosecutors said.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office's Crime Lab tested DNA evidence found on the woman's shorts, and it also matched Daniel's, prosecutors said.

Since her attack, she said she cannot walk alone. She still feels ashamed, and has not told her father of the attack.

"I hope it will get better," she said. "I've been very nervous about this moment. I hope this is it."

The trial will resume Wednesday with the sexual assault nurse who examined the woman, and detective Michael Moctezuma, the Cleveland police sex crimes detective who investigated the case.

Prosecutors will present the evidence in the order that investigators went to connect the crimes -- from the Edgewater rape, to the Aug. 30 rape on Warren Road, then the Sept. 1 aggravated robbery of two women on Marlowe Avenue.

Daniel is on trial for 17 charges from the three separate crimes -- five counts of rape, six counts of kidnapping, two counts of aggravated robbery, one count of felonious assault and three weapons counts.

He faces an additional five charges in connection with a 2000 burglary and rape that will be tried separately.

If convicted, Daniel could face more than 40 years in prison.