Last year, when Brian Brent was sentenced for stealing property from his employer and selling it on eBay, the court attached some of the standard conditions for felony crimes.
Pay $700 in fines and fees, have no association with drug users or sellers, and submit to a DNA sample.
Pierce County prosecutors now say that DNA sample has tied Brent to a decade-old, unsolved rape case in Tacoma.
The 38-year-old University Place resident is to be arraigned Tuesday on charges of first-degree rape, first-degree burglary with sexual motivation and second-degree assault with sexual motivation. Brent, who had been serving his theft conviction at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, was returned to the Pierce County Jail last week to face the new charges.
Wayne Fricke, Brent’s attorney, said his client denies the allegation. He declined to comment further.
The rape charges stem from an overnight attack June 2, 2002. Court documents gave this account:
A woman told police she’d hosted a barbecue at her home in the 5000 block of North Bristol Street. A neighbor also had a party and guests were going between the homes throughout the night.
Shortly after 1 a.m., she sent everyone home and went to bed. She told police she left the back door unlocked for her boyfriend and fell asleep. Sometime after 2 a.m., she woke to find a stranger standing over her. He threatened to harm her and punched her in the face and head several times when she struggled to get free.
The intruder sexually assaulted her. He told her to put her face into a pillow and count to 45. The intruder left. The woman put on clothes, went to her boyfriend’s house and called 911.
She was checked out at a hospital for a concussion, broken nose and fractured eye socket. She also had a sexual assault exam in which evidence was collected. Her pajama pants, soiled with her attacker’s semen, were taken as evidence.
At the time, investigators interviewed several men who’d been at both parties and obtained DNA samples from them. None of the submitted samples matched the attacker’s DNA profile developed from the evidence.
The attacker’s DNA sample was compared to the state’s database of convicted felons in September 2002, but no matches were found. Samples like the one from the North Bristol case routinely are run against the database, which contains DNA profiles of men and women convicted of all felonies and select gross misdemeanors.
The North Bristol case went cold until March, when the sample again was run through the convicted felon database. This time it matched Brent.
He had pleaded guilty in September to allegations he stole equipment, including a laptop computer, from the Click Network while he was an employee and sold items on eBay. Superior Court Judge Stephanie Arend sentenced him in November to more than a year in prison.
Prosecutors say Brent’s physical description matches the woman’s attacker. Tacoma police have obtained a new DNA sample from Brent to compare against the evidence in the rape case.
stacey.mulick@thenewstribune.com
253-597-8268
blog.thenewstribune.com/crime
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