The 27-year-old suspect in a New York City homicide who allegedly held a woman captive in her North Hollywood apartment and sexually assaulted her has been charged, prosecutors said Friday.
Danueal Drayton, of Brooklyn, has been charged with attempted murder, forcible rape, false imprisonment by violence and sexual penetration by a foreign object, according to a news release from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
He is scheduled to be arraigned at the courthouse in Van Nuys on Friday, the release stated.
Drayton was the subject of a cross-country manhunt by New York Police Department detectives after he allegedly strangled a registered nurse inside her Queens residence on July 17, according to multiple reports.
Samantha Stewart’s body was found wrapped in a blanket, her teeth missing and a pool of blood surrounding her head, the New York Daily News reported. The victim’s brother and father made the gruesome discovery.
Detectives connected the homicide with a rape in Brooklyn several weeks earlier; they then tracked the suspect to a California hotel where he was allegedly holding a woman captive, according to KTLA sister station WPIX in New York.
Prosecutors later revealed that Drayton was suspected of holding the 28-year-old victim against her will at her apartment in North Hollywood after the pair went on a date, the DA’s release stated.
He allegedly sexually assaulted and attempted to strangle the woman over a two-day period, this past Sunday and Monday, prosecutors said.
Drayton was taken into custody by personnel from the Los Angeles Police Department’s North Hollywood Division on Tuesday, jail records showed.
The woman’s condition was not immediately known.
The suspect met the victims online, prompting concern that there may be others out there, according to NYPD officials.
“This individual uses dating websites to meet women and then victimize women,” Police Chief Dermot Shea said. “There’s potentially more victims out there.”
Family members told police that they believe Stewart and Drayton had been dating and she wanted to break it off, but he refused, the newspaper reported.
A motive for the homicide was still under investigation.
Drayton is being held on $1.25 million bail in the L.A. case, according to jail records.
No information was immediately available regarding possible charges the suspect faced back in New York.
KTLA’s Jennifer Thang contributed to this story.
