A grand jury in the District has indicted a D.C. and Prince George’s County, Maryland, resident nine years after he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman in an alley, prosecutors said.
Officials said Dawayne Joseph Spriggs, 37, was arraigned on charges from a cold case in 2014 after a rape test kit matched his DNA to another victim’s rape kit in nearby Anne Arundel County, Maryland.
Court documents argue that Spriggs physically and sexually assaulted a victim in an alley near the Minnesota Avenue Metro Station around 1 a.m. After the assault, the victim was given a rape kit, tested for DNA in 2014 and entered into a national database.
“In 2016, the database reported a match between the DNA profile obtained from the rape kit and another sexual assault offense that had been reported in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, in 2013,” the department said in its release.
Officials said detectives in the District’s cold case investigators identified Spriggs as the match to both rape kits.
A D.C. court indicted Spriggs on Sept. 13 on four sexual abuse charges. He will face a maximum 30-year prison sentence and a minimum of five years supervised release if convicted, and may be fined $125,000 for the incident. He will also be required to register as a sex offender.
His trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 12.
