Crime & Safety
DNA Links Man To 2017 Bus Stop Rape Case: Montgomery Police
DNA evidence linked a 29-year-old man to a 2017 rape at a Gaithersburg bus stop, police say.
GAITHERSBURG, MD — A Montgomery County man accused of raping a woman at a Gaithersburg bus stop in 2017 was arrested on Tuesday after DNA evidence linked him to the assault, according to police.
David Lee Williams, 29, of Germantown, was charged with first-degree rape, first-degree assault, second-degree assault, and reckless endangerment, court records show.
The incident happened on Oct. 6, 2017 at about 5:30 a.m. A woman was waiting at a bus stop on Watkins Mills Road when a man grabbed her and pulled her toward a nearby wooded area, authorities said. He then raped the woman and fled the scene.
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Montgomery County detectives sought help from a Virginia-based DNA technology company that specializes in DNA phenotyping — a process of predicting physical appearance and ancestry from unidentified DNA evidence.
Using DNA collected during the investigation, the company, Parabon NanoLabs, developed a composite snapshot that predicted the suspect's ancestry and physical appearance.
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Police published the composite online, in hopes that the public could help identify the man.
that DNA obtained from the scene of an attempted burglary on Aug. 7, 2017, matched the DNA from the first-degree rape case in Gaithersburg, police said.
Detectives examined the two investigations and noticed that a "David" was mentioned as a person of interest in both cases. David Lee Williams was then identified as a possible suspect.
"(On Tuesday), a warrant was obtained for Williams' DNA and his DNA was submitted to the Montgomery County Department of Police Crime Laboratory for analysis. Testing revealed that Williams' DNA matched that of the suspect's DNA taken from the scene of the rape and the attempted burglary," police said in a statement.
That night, authorities arrested Williams in Germantown and charged him with rape. Police say he is being held without bond.
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