Four years after rape, DNA match via database implicates Aurora man

August 29, 2007
By MATT HANLEY STAFF WRITER

A DNA match has lead St. Charles police to charge an Aurora man with a 2002 criminal sexual assault.

Carlos Lopez, 24, of the 300 block of South Fourth Street, Aurora, was charged with felony aggravated criminal sexual assault, criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual assault Monday, police said.

According to police, at 10:05 p.m. on Dec. 21, 2002, Lopez approached a 32-year-old woman while she was in the driver's seat of her car, which was parked outside an apartment building in Aurora.

Lopez, who was wearing a winter coat and black ski mask, asked the woman for a ride to a business in Batavia, but when he got in the car he pulled a gun, police said. Lopez told the woman to drive to a business in the 400 block of South 38th Avenue in St. Charles, where he sexually assaulted her, then fled, police said.

The victim called St. Charles police, and officers brought her to Delnor-Community Hospital in Geneva. A sexual-assault kit was collected at the scene, but a DNA sample failed to provide a match with state police at that time, police said.

In 2006, the DNA sample was searched against a state database again, and this time it came up with a positive match for Lopez, police said. On Aug. 16, 2006, police issued a warrant, only to discover that Lopez had been deported during a sweep of a Mexican street gang in Aurora.

In May 2006, Lopez had been arrested by Aurora police as part a nationwide investigation targeting gangs with foreign-born members. The Aurora men arrested in that sweep were all illegal immigrants who were documented members or associates of the Sureno 13 street gang, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But police said Lopez was recently arrested in Kendall County on an obstruction warrant out of Kendall County. He was transferred to Kane County jail, where he is being held on $1 million bond, police said.

Lopez is scheduled to appear in court Friday.

mhanley@scn1.com

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