CLEVELAND, Ohio — A 26-year-old man will spend the next 25 years in prison after being sentenced for sexually assaulting a developmentally disabled 30-year-old woman in Garfield Heights and a 76-year-old woman in South Euclid.
According to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, the assailant, Derrick Brown, of Cleveland, pleaded guilty to three counts of rape, two counts of felonious assault, one count of aggravated burglary, one count of kidnapping, one count of aggravated robbery and one count of grand theft.
The first incident involved the sexual assault of a 30-year-old woman in Garfield Heights in 2013.
Authorities say the woman was talking with a friend outside an apartment complex when Brown walked up and started talking with them. The friend let Brown and the woman inside the complex and then went to an upstairs unit and left the two in a hallway.
Brown then demanded sex from the woman and punched her in the face, breaking her nose. He pushed her to the ground and sexually assaulted her before running off, authorities said.
Brown’s DNA was collected at the scene and entered into the FBI national Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), but authorities were unable to get a hit on it since he didn’t have any prior arrests.
Brown was arrested years later on Jan. 21, 2019, by the U.S. Marshals Service after an investigation into the rape of a 76-year-old woman.
In that incident, authorities say Brown climbed through the basement window of a house in South Euclid on Jan. 9, 2019 and attacked and sexually assaulted a 76-year-old resident multiple times at knife point.
Following the assaults, Brown forced the woman to drive to a bank and withdraw money for him from an ATM. Brown then drove her home and left again in her car.
The woman was later transported to a nearby hospital and a rape kit was taken. DNA from that rape kit linked Brown to that assault as well as the rape in 2013.
After being released from prison, Brown will be designated as a Tier-III sex offender and will be required to register every 90 days with police for the rest of his life.
“This predator violently beat and raped these victims, whose lives are now forever changed,” said Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley, “He deserves every day of this decades-long prison sentence for these despicable actions.”
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